Matisse's War - Softcover

Everett, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099735318 ISBN 13: 9780099735311

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

At seventy, Henri Matisse is a trim, clean old gentleman with a passion for naked women. He is UN MONSTRE SACRE who depicts with passion and conviction only what he takes pleasure in, only what he chooses to see. He is art personified. If there were no Matisse there would be no art as such. . . . He has purged everything from his painting except anxieties concerning structure and colour; his struggle is with these alone! MATISSE'S WAR is a minutely researched yet fictional account of Matisse's life during the years 1939-1945. It is also a superb portrait of the lives of the major French artists and writers under the German occupation. Louis Aragon, Malraux, Picasso and Bonnard all appear prominently in the narrative.

About this title

Review:

"Brilliant, fiercely intelligent and moving" (A.S.Byatt)

"A truly persuasive evocation of artistic France in the last war... A brilliant recreation of a lost period" (John Fowles, Books of the Year Guardian)

"A remarkable and very good writer... Everett writes with a rare vividness. He takes a sensuous pleasure in what he sees, and he has a fine ability to translate this into words that have the immediacy of one of Matisse's paintings" (Allan Massie Scotsman)

"An extraordinary feat of historical and artistic imagining" (Anton Nickson Time Out)

From the Back Cover:

'A truly persuasive evocation of artistic France in the last war...A brilliant recreation of a lost period'
-John Fowles, Books of the Year, Guardian

'Matisse's War follows its eponymous anti-hero around France from 1939 to 1945. After the Fall in 1940, Matisse...criss-crossed Vichy and occupied France, regularly bumping into Picasso, Bonnard, Aragon, Elsa Triolet and Camus on his travels...[An] unusual achievement. Matisse's War is an imaginative tour de force and shows that a contemporary novel can be learned, ambitious, adult and accessible, all at the same time'
-Howard Davies, The Times

'A remarkable and very good writer...Everett writes with a rare vividness. He takes a sensuous pleasure in what he sees, and he has a fine ability to translate this into words that have the immediacy of one of Matisse's paintings'
-Allan Massie, Scotsman

'An extraordinary feat of historical and artistic imagining'
-Anton Nickson, Time Out

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0099735318
• ISBN 13: 9780099735311
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336