Henri Matisse

A critic who saw Woman with a Hat at the 1905 Salon called the painters wild beasts. The face had green and violet on it. Matisse released colour from the duty of describing. He painted interiors, windows and dancing bodies in flat planes held by heavy contour, and in The Red Room he erased even the line between wall and tablecloth. When surgery for cancer late in life made painting difficult, he began cutting shapes from coloured paper with scissors. The cut-outs, made from his bed, are considered his freest work. He died in Nice in 1954.