Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color

He had become bedridden and unable to paint following an excruciating abdominal surgery, and cut paper allowed him to continue to create in his relatively sedentary state. Encouraged by his friend, the book publisher Tériade (the pseudonym of Stratis Eleftheriades), Matisse furthered his exploration of this new technique. He mined his memories of Parisian music halls, the circus, trips to Tahiti, folktales, and mythology, and produced a series of 20 cut-paper maquettes.

Pages from Jazz

All images by Henri Matisse, Printed by Edmond Vairel, Published by Tériade for Éditions Verve. The Art Institute of Chicago, Simeon B. Williams Fund. © 2025 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

These vibrant original compositions were then faithfully reproduced using pochoir (stencil) and combined with an original text written by Matisse to form an unbound book, Jazz, that was published in 1947—when Matisse was 77 years old. Jazz caused an immediate international sensation and reinvigorated the aging artist, setting him on a new course of artistic discovery.

Matisse’s extraordinary images of Jazz are not only captivating and provocative in their own right but also reflect a practice devoted to the exploration of color and line. Throughout the artist’s decades-long career, he pushed color from the purely visual to the nearly transcendental and progressively simplified his line to the most elemental. But until his cut-outs, his color and line existed separately, one modifying the other but never fully unified—at least not to Matisse’s own satisfaction.

“The paper cutouts allow me to draw with color. For me, it is a simplification. Instead of drawing an outline and then filling in with color—with one modifying the other—I draw directly in color… . It is not a starting point, it is a completion.”

—Henri Matisse, 1951

This exhibition marks the first time Matisse’s Jazz will be shown in its entirety since the Art Institute acquired it in 1948. One of the most important livres d’artiste (artist books) of the 20th century, Jazz joins over 50 works from the museum’s renowned collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, illustrated books, and textiles to showcase the famed artist’s commitment across his 50-year career to continual innovation and the expressive power of color and line.

Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color is curated by Emily Ziemba, director of curatorial administration and research curator, Prints and Drawings.