JAZZ

First published in 1947, Henri Matisse’s collection of paper cutouts represented a culmination of the artist’s striving to combine his love of form and color. To create Jazz, Matisse carefully arranged twenty cut-outs as compositions. Like the musical genre they celebrate, the works are at once spontaneous and unified, improvisational yet clearly orchestrated. Serving as a complement to these blasts of color are messages, in Matisse’s own handwriting, of his ideas and inspirations. The resulting book is one of the twentieth century’s most significant works of art. Katrin Wiethege’s introductory essay delves into the artist’s method of creating the cut-outs in his studio as well as the painstaking process of printing the book itself. Exquisitely made to resemble the color, printing technique, and paper of the first hand-crafted edition of the book, this volume features Matisse’s unforgettable images and words in all their original splendor.