Blue Nude 1952

Updated 3/2017-- all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active.

Let me share something lovely with you. Give you a break from the "not-so-pretty" skin changes. This is one of the first quilts I did for my office. It is a close "replica" of Henri Matisse's Blue Nude 1952. My husband helped my "draft" the pattern. It is made of silk noire, appliqued, and then echo quilted by hand. I think that Mattisse would have made a wonderful quilt artist during his paper cutouts phase at the end of his life. Many of those remind me of quilts.

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869, in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France. While recuperating from two major operations in 1941 and 1942, Matisse concentrated on a technique he had devised earlier: papiers découpés (paper cutouts). Jazz, written and illustrated by Matisse, was published in 1947; the plates are stencil reproductions of paper cutouts. In 1948 he began the design for the decoration of Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, which was completed and consecrated in 1951. In 1952 the Musée Matisse was inaugurated at the artist’s birthplace of Le Cateau–Cambrésis. Matisse continued to make large paper cutouts, the last of which was a design for the rose window at Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York. He died on November 3, 1954, in Nice.