This weekend, the Tomato Industrial Museum art workshop meets the work of Henri Matisse!
Born in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrezi, France, Henri Matisse was one of the most important artists of modern art of the 20th century.
He studied law and worked as a notary public. A few years later he fell seriously ill and had to stay at home for a long time. During this period his mother gave him a painting set which was to be the first time he came into contact with the art of painting. So, in 1891, he went to an Academy of Arts in Paris and studied painting. He was very fond of the still lifes of the painter Jean Baptiste Chardin and copied some of his works, four of which are now in the Louvre museum. In 1896 the French state bought 2 of the 5 works he exhibited at the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
He was close friends with Van Gogh and Peter Russel where, as Matisse himself said, they influenced him significantly. Russel even taught him color theory.
He studied the works of many more painters and spent a lot of money to buy favorite works which became the driving force of his creativity.
During the years of his work, he received considerable praise as well as harsh criticism, all of which had a significant impact on his psychology.
In 1914, after a surgery, he started using a wheelchair, keeping it until the end of his life.
He continued to work tirelessly completing many painting projects, hells as well as the interior decoration of a chapel.
In 1952 he finally founded his own Museum. Two years later he passed away at the age of 84.
The work we will discover is called “The Dance” and is one of his most famous paintings. This work along with another he called “Music” were created in 1910 to decorate a staircase in the house of Sergei Shukin, a famous collector. In 1911 Matisse traveled to Moscow to personally supervise the installation of the two large works. After the Shukin collection and the State Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow, the work has been in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg since 1948.
Dates: April 13 & 14
Classes: Saturday 16:30-18:00
Sunday 10:30-12:00, 12:30-14:00
Participation is ensured by the timely telephone communication of the parent on the phone 22860 85141 Tuesday – Sunday 10.00-18.00.
Up to 20 children per section. First come first served.
Workshop coordinators: Eleni Palle, Lydia Karagiannidis