Matisses Dance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Matisses Dance - Essay Example Henri Matisse received an important commission in 1909 from Sergei Shchukin, who was a wealthy Russian industrialist. Shchukin asked Matisse to pain three large scale canvases that would be used to decorate the spiral staircase of his Trubetskoy palace Mansion located in Moscow. After the Russian revolution of 1917, these panels were obtained by the Hermitage. the Large and well loved painting Dance 1 is considered to be rather disingenuously titled and although it is essentially a full scale in oil, of interest is that Matisse did not initially consider it to be more than a preparatory sketch (Rubin & Matisse, 2008). Henri Matisse was already an established law clerk in Paris when he began to keenly follow his interest in art and painting. He conducted an intense study of the works of some of the post-impressionistic painters such as Paul Cezanne before he and some of his contemporaries went on to create what was dubbed as the Fauvism movement. The Fauvism movement was their perception of the post-impressionistic era. However, this movement lasted for a relatively very short duration and its signature brush strokes eventually disappeared from Matisse’s work which later on went to encompass the Cubist movement style. The Dance 1 painting is considered to be one of the most noteworthy pieces that Matisse was able to produce during his Fauvism period (Zibas, 2011).