Henri Matisse with his Model, Micaela Avogadro, Vence, 1943

After two previously failed attempts, Henri Cartier-Bresson successfully escaped from a Nazi prison camp in 1943. Shortly afterward he met the publisher Pierre Braun who proposed to publish new photographs of artists in their studios and writers at work in a projected series of monographs. These prints were made at that time for the books which unfortunately were never realized.