During the 1920s, Matisse's color brightened again and his patterns became more complex, especially in his Odalisques , female nudes against arabesques of North African fabrics. He also adopted decorative motifs from ancient Persian art. From 1944 to the end of his life, he produced decoupes, in which he cut shapes from colored paper and pasted them onto fields of white. These works, which achieve an ultimate blending of Matisse's vibrant color with the energetic flow of his line, are considered by many to be his best. Matisse's supreme accomplishment, which may be seen in all his work, was to liberate color from its traditionally realistic function and to make it the foundation of a decorative art of the highest order.
Credit is attributed when known.
Some works are considered to be in the public domain, based on current U.S. and international copyright acts. For more information on copyright laws, please refer to the Artists Rights Society and Benedict O'Mahoney's The Copyright Web Site . In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking of a tightrope. In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.