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Lot Essay
Henri Matisse created Jazz towards the end of his life, when he was restricted to working from his bed, and it is a glorious celebration of life, a riot of colours and shapes. The twenty pochoirs mark a new departure in his work. The maquettes for Jazz are amongst the first essays in a medium entirely of his own devising - the papier coupée - which finally lead him to abandon painting altogether. For Matisse, the technique of cutting shapes or 'signs' from brightly coloured sheets of paper finally closed the gap between line and form, and linked "drawing and colour in a single movement" (Matisse in an interview with André Lejard, Amis de l'Art, no. 2, Oct. 1951). Matisse insisted on printing Jazz using the same Linel gouache paints he had used for colouring his paper cut-out maquettes. It is these intensely glowing colours, beautifully preserved in the present example, which make Jazz one of the greatest livres d'artiste of the 20th century.
The present copy is bound in a unique binding by one of the masters of modern bookbinding, Henri Creuzevault (1905-1956). It is one of only two bindings Creuzevault created for Matisse's Jazz. The other binding, decorated with a bursting star motif, was designed for a copy of the book edition sold at Christie's, Paris, 21 May 2003, lot 85.
The present copy is bound in a unique binding by one of the masters of modern bookbinding, Henri Creuzevault (1905-1956). It is one of only two bindings Creuzevault created for Matisse's Jazz. The other binding, decorated with a bursting star motif, was designed for a copy of the book edition sold at Christie's, Paris, 21 May 2003, lot 85.