Venus 1952

Henri Matisse made this Venus from paper, somewhere along the line. When I look at this work, I think about the act of cutting, the snip of scissors slicing through color, the way forms emerge not from addition but subtraction. Matisse is carving out space and volume. The blue is so solid, anchoring the figure, while the pale ground hums with quiet energy. I can imagine Matisse shuffling around big pieces of paper, trying things out, stepping back, squinting. Did he hesitate? What did he leave on the cutting room floor? This figure feels archetypal, yet so essentially Matisse, a harmony of curves and angles, a distillation of form. Like other painters, he wasn’t afraid to steal from the past, but he always made it his own. And that’s what painting is, right? An ongoing conversation, where we borrow, transform, and keep the dialogue moving.