Word: tate
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...Matisse for his color-drenched canvases. But, at 83, France's ailing master is anxious to be known for his work in another medium before he dies: his sculpture. There isn't much of it, and only rarely has it been shown. Last week London's Tate Gallery gladly obliged the old man with the largest exhibit of Matisse sculpture ever shown, 49 pieces, almost all of his output in clay and bronze...
...knife might never challenge his brush, but his work is still something any sculptor could be proud of. He began in 1899, at the age of 29, and worked in fits & starts until 1930, never long enough to develop a steady style. The gleaming bronzes at the Tate alternate between muscular realism and cubist distortion, are smooth and rough, delicate and grossly bulky. Yet each reflects the Matisse eye for form...
From 1906 on, Matisse's sculpture became more & more distorted as he flirted with cubism. The Tate exhibit shows a vigorously lumpy Reclining Nude, a small Torso with Head, unnaturally swaybacked, with cubes for breasts. As in his paintings, Matisse often did several studies leading up to a final sculpture; there are four heads of Jeannette, the first a standard, lifelike portrait, the last a fiercely distorted impression, squeezed and hacked out of shape...
Collector Warren never gave up title to the masterpiece, and now his heir, a man named Asa Thomas, has decided to sell. Foreign bidders, said Owner Thomas, have long tempted him with offers, one for ?12,000 ($33,600), but he much preferred to sell to the Tate. He set a rock-bottom Tate price of ?7,500, gave the gallery a three-month option to raise the money. Tate trustees looked hard at their treasury. They could put up ?2,000 toward the price, they decided, but would have to call on the public for the remaining...
Last week, with two months left to raise the money, Tate Director Sir John Rothenstein sadly reported that while scores of Britons had sent contributions, the total so far was only ?600. Sir John was planning one more appeal. Said he: "Rodin is perhaps the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo . . . This is the only Rodin marble in a public collection in England...