The energetic, vivid fuchsia form shown here at the left represents a knife thrower, while the static, pale blue form with upraised arms at the right suggests his female partner in the popular circus act. Shapes resembling leaves float across the composition, providing a dreamlike atmosphere for this aesthetic vision. "These images, with their lively and violent tones, derive from crystallizations of memories of circuses, folktales, and voyages." So wrote Matisse in the poetic text accompanying his compositions for Jazz, his extraordinary artist's book. The Knife Thrower is one of twenty images in this volume, which are interleaved with pages on which his own handwritten words are printed.
Late in his career, after being bedridden following surgery in 1941, Matisse turned to making collages from painted papers. Using scissors, he cut curved shapes, which he then arranged in animated compositions. The adventurous publisher Tériade encouraged Matisse to create a book from these dazzling creations. The artist chose the printing technique of pochoir, which is notable for its ability to achieve saturated areas of flat brilliant colors by a process of applying gouache inks through stencils.
The Knife Thrower from Jazz by Henri Matisse. 1943-47
Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 210.