Cultural box Brasilia presents the Jazz series of Henri Matisse

“It is not enough to put colors, by very beautiful they are, some at the foot of the other, It takes even if these colors Act on each other. Otherwise is pure cacophony. Jazz is a rhythm and a meaning”.

Henri Matisse, 1952

The Cultural Box Brasilia inaugurates day 25 of October the exhibition Henri Matisse – Jazz, with works of the painter, French sculptor and artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). The show brings together 20 printed boards with the technique au pochoir, made especially for the album Jazz, published in 1947. Were printed 250 albums, of these, two are in Brazil. The works now presented belong to copy 196, integrating the acquis of the Castro Maya Museums. The curator of the exhibition is of Anna Paola Baptista, Curator of the Museu da Chácara do Céu.

"The most beautiful book of 20TH century art", with these words the art critic Paulo Herkenhoff synthesizes the beautiful set of drawings made with scissors, technique developed by Matisse in the early 1940. Forced to spend long periods in bed and wheelchair, recovering from a delicate surgery, the first painter dedicated himself to drawing and illustration. Then went further, combining drawing and painting in collages made with paper cut and colored with gouache. The artist had already used the papiers usagé for the study of the work La danse (1909), but it was the complicity of the editor Tériade critic and that encouraged him to perform an album just with paper cut, work that was later regarded as one of his most important works.

During the first two years of work Matisse experimented with colors and shapes, using sheets of paper that color with bright and vivid gouache colors. Cut to achieve the result intended to. The editing process of the album, begun in 1942, It lasted five years. The title was set in 1944 and the idea of including text, in 1946. The images range from the abstraction of figures great vivacity, merged to a handwritten text printed in Fac-simile in which Matisse weaves comments on miscellaneous issues. The author himself explains that the composition deals with issues related to the circus, folk tales and travel, with identifiable rhythm to the sounds of a jazz orchestra. The boards on display are of copy 196, of the 250 printed documents, and belong to the collection of Castro Maya Museums.