Mr. Matisse and His Cutouts

Van Haeringen follows her 2015 biography of Coco Chanel, Coco and the Little Black Dress, with an upbeat look at how Henri Matisse turned a setback into a new chapter in his artistic life. Initially described as an artist “with the sun in his tummy [whose] colors made everyone joyful,” Matisse is sidelined by illness and left unable to paint. Scissors and paper in the hospital room allow Matisse to bring color into his environment, and he continued to experiment with paper cutouts after he returned home. Van Haeringen splashes the pages with vividly colored cutouts of foliage, fruit, and abstracted shapes, providing a solid visual representation of the direction Matisse’s work took, and a closing note offers additional details about his illness (abdominal cancer) and the “new art form” of his cutout collages. It’s a charming window into the mind-set of an artist determined to create. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)