Cut-Outs of Henri Matisse by John Elderfield While recovering from an operation that nearly claimed his life, seventy-one-year-old Henri Matisse turned to a technique with which he was already familiar that required less physical strength than oil painting -- paper cut-outs. By the mid-1940's, Matisse had composed magnificent cut-outs that drew together the threads of his life's work. "The cut-out is what I have found to be the simplest and most direct way of expressing myself," he wrote. "I have attained a form filtered to its essentials." In the brilliant and joyous cutouts of the last decade of his life, Matisse's art was revitalized. The introduction by John Elderfield discusses the genesis and development of the cut-outs and their place within both Matisse's ouevre and twentieth-century art. PA, ISBN: 0807608866 $19.95 (Can: $30.00)