Henri Matisse “The Snail” – Official 2001 Tate Gallery Poster

This original Henri Matisse poster is from The Tate Gallery in London from 2001.
The Snail (L'Escargot) is one of Henri Matisse's final monumental masterpieces created using gouache-painted paper cut-outs (papiers découpés). Confined to a wheelchair at the Hôtel Régina in Nice late in life, Matisse had assistants paint sheets of paper with bold gouache colors, which he then cut and instructed to pin onto canvas in a spiraling arrangement echoing a snail's shell.
Provenance: Succession H. Matisse/ DACS 2001
Poster: 2001 Tate Gallery Publishing Ltd, Millbank, London  Printed in Britain 10M0401
Dimensions: 33.5 in x 33.5 in (85 cm x 85 cm)

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

The intense colorism of the works he painted between 1900 and 1905 brought him notoriety as one of the Fauves (wild beasts). Many of his finest works were created in the decade or so after 1906, when he developed a rigorous style that emphasized flattened forms and decorative pattern. In 1917, he relocated to a suburb of Nice on the French Riviera, and the more relaxed style of his work during the 1920s gained him critical acclaim as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. After 1930, he adopted a bolder simplification of form. When ill health in his final years prevented him from painting, he created an important body of work in the medium of cut paper collage.

What is special about exhibition and gallery posters is that they are an affordable way of getting good, unique art on the walls, as although it is not an artists original, neither is it something that has been mass reproduced.

Because of the age of these posters, there are areas of wear and tear, particularly on the edges. I have done my best to take photos where they are torn. The good news is that when framed, the tears press up well against glass, and edges can be hidden by mats. Any wear picked up from years are part of the charm.

These posters are sent as unframed. They are delivered in a cardboard tube for protection.

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