''The Snail'' ''(L'escargot)'' is a collage by
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...
. The work was created from summer 1952 to early 1953. It is pigmented with
gouache
Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache ...
on paper, cut and pasted onto a base layer of white paper measuring 9'4" × 9' 5" (287 × 288 cm). The piece is in the
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...
collection in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
[Henri Matisse, ''The Snail'' 1953]
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
, retrieved August 5, 2012]
Description and background
It consists of a number of colored shapes arranged in a spiral pattern, as suggested by the title. Matisse first drew the snail, then used the colored paper to interpret it. The composition pairs complementary colors: Matisse gave the work the alternative title ''La Composition Chromatique''.
[ From the early-to-mid-1940s Matisse was in increasingly poor health, and was suffering from arthritis. Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in favor of ''gouaches découpées'', paper cutouts.]["Henri Matisse"]
, Pompidou Centre
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
. Retrieved 25 December 2007. ''The Snail'' is a major example of this final body of works.
References
External links
from the Tate retrieved December 25, 2007
1953 paintings
Paintings by Henri Matisse
Collection of the Tate galleries
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