Blue Nude II

A seated nude is composed entirely of flat shapes cut from paper painted brilliant blue, the limbs folded and rearranged into a bold, rhythmic silhouette against white. Henri Matisse, confined by illness in his final years, made the cut-out his triumphant late medium, 'drawing with scissors' to fuse color and line in a single stroke. Now in the Centre Pompidou, Blue Nude II is among the masterpieces of that period - the human figure distilled to a few sweeping, sensuous shapes, decades of study of the body condensed into pure, joyful, weightless form.