? Here is the second of my mini masterpiece cross stitches. This is The Snail by Henri Matisse and was created in 1953 a year before his death. I love this piece, it hangs in Tate Modern and always makes me go ‘wow!’ It measures nearly 3 metres square and is one of Matisse’s most famous and loved pieces.
As Matisse was in a wheelchair at this time, he employed assistants to help him in his work. Matisse would paint and cut or tear the paper then hand these over to his assistants to place with meticulous specifications.
Matisse’s daughter remembers him drawing lots of snails around this time so it was something he was exploring in depth. The shell of the snail is formed by the colourful concentric shapes in the centre of the collage. Matisse has also used complementary colours adjacent to each other for maximum colour impact, these being red and green, blue and yellow and orange and blue.
Something you won’t see here but is in the original is a tiny lilac snail silhouette in the top left corner. It sits on top of the lilac shape in front of the orange border. If you don’t know it’s there you probably won’t see it so make sure you look out for it if you ever take a trip to Tate Modern. ??