Lillie Road Arts and Antiques Quarter

Decoration Fruits, 1958, a colour lithograph by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) pale cream smooth wove paper based on the cut-paper maquette of the same title, 1953. 

In 1953 Matisse received a commission to design a ceramic tile mural for an enclosed patio at the home of Frances Lasker Brody, a noted patron of the arts based in Los Angeles.  With no specifications, Matisse produced three monumental cut-outs to serve as potential maquettes for the commission: Decoration Masques, Decoration Fruits and Apollon. The blue and white form at the right of the image denoted the doorway in Brody's patio courtyard.  However, when Brody visited the artist's studio in May 1953 she rejected all three designs requesting something less symmetrical and classically-influenced.  Decoration Fruits is the largest of Matisse's cutouts to remain in france and is held by the Musee Matisse in Nice.

Created and editioned at the Mourlot Studio, Paris 1954, under the supervision of Matisse who died in November 1954 before the magazine could be published.  This special edition of Verve was eventually issued by Teriade for Verve Magazine Volume IX, Nos 35 & 36 July 1958 under the title 'Dernieres Oeuvres de Matisse 1950-54. It included forty original lithographs of which this is one.

The printing of the lithographs in colour by Mourlot Freres and that of the photogravure reproductions and the typography by the master printers Drager Freres, was completed in Paris on 28 July 1958.

It is mounted and presented in a sloped hand-painted in Little Greene's cape red with gloss and non-reflective glass.

Framed: 53 x 93 cm