Matisse Windsocks

In 1941 Matisse was diagnosed with cancer and, following surgery, he started using a wheelchair.  However, Matisse’s extraordinary creativity was not be dampened for long. “Une seconde vie”, a second life, was what he called the last fourteen years of his life. Following an operation he found renewed  and unexpected energies and the beautiful Russian-born assistant, Lydia Delectorskaya, to keep him company. 

Vast in scale (though not always in size), lush and rigorous in color, his cutouts are among the most admired and influential works of Matisse’s entire career.  By maneuvering scissors through prepared sheets of paper, he inaugurated a new phase of his career.

We applied the concept of cutting paper to make shapes found in Matisse’s famous cut paper compositions.  The composition was rolled and turned into a windsock to prove that art can take on many forms and functions – some as whimsical as the works Matisse drew with his scissors!