The Dance (painting)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Dance is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1909.
[edit] Importance
"The Dance" is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting".[1] It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.
This painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky's famous musical work The Rite of Spring.
[edit] Versions
Two versions of the work exist. The first, now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, uses paler colors and less detail. It was painted after the fall of the Fauvism movement in 1906. The painting was highly regarded by the artist who once called it "the overpowering climax of luminosity"; it is also featured in the background of Matisse's La Danse with Nasturtiums (1912).
The second version, located at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, uses a more classic Fauvist color palate. Together with a companion piece, La Musique, this large decorative panel was created specifically for the Moscow mansion of the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association.
[edit] References
- ^ Russell T. Clement. Four French Symbolists. Greenwood Press, 1996. Page 114.
 |
This painting-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
