Golden Seaweed

About this work

Tall seaweed and algae shapes, cut from shimmering gold leaf, rise across a deep cobalt blue ground. A few small cream scraps drift between them. The forms are bold and very simple, and they seem to sway gently, like plants moving under water.

Henri Matisse returned to the sea in the paper cut-outs of his last decade. In 1930 he had travelled to Tahiti, and the lagoons, coral and drifting plants he saw there came back to him years later, when he was often working from a wheelchair or from bed in Nice. With scissors and paper painted in gouache, he cut algae, leaves and swimming forms and had them pinned to the walls of his room. Golden Seaweed is a reimagining in gold, not a copy: the same free outlines, now in gold leaf on blue.

Joyful and fresh, it looks striking in a living room, a bathroom or above a bed with white linen. White, sand and pale grey walls make the cobalt sing, and natural wood keeps it relaxed. In the Cut-Outs in Gold set it hangs with Golden Leaves on Black and The Golden Tree with Birds, so blue, black and deep green sit side by side. The file prints sharply to about 76 cm on the long edge at 300 dpi.