Henri Matisse biography in Biographies from the artzine on artrepublic.com

He was also one of many of the avant-garde artists of the 20th century to be influenced by ‘primitive art’. Perhaps his greatest development was bought about by illness. Whilst recovering from cancer treatment with the help of assistants he began creating striking abstract compositions from painted cut out paper.

Matisse was born in 1869 in France. As a young man he went to Paris to study Law but soon took up art instead. From the 1920s onwards he was an internationally renowned artist as was his friend and rival Picasso. In 1949-51 he designed the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, dedicated to the woman who had nursed him back to health after his serious illness and then gone on to become a nun. He died in Nice in 1954.