Icare (Icarus)

Henri Matisse’s Icarus (Icare, 1947) is a gouache on paper, cut and pasted, from the illustrated book Jazz depicting a black silhouette of a falling figure with outstretched arms and legs, a vivid red heart at the center of the chest, encircled by radiant yellow starbursts against an intense cobalt blue void. The abstracted, elongated form captures a sense of ecstatic descent and boundless energy through stark silhouettes, pulsating color accents, and rhythmic contours. The composition spirals with mythic propulsion, presenting the plunge as a celebration of daring vitality and emotional intensity.

Artistic and Social Context

Executed in 1946–1947 as plate VIII in the landmark Jazz portfolio—Matisse's exuberant livre d'artiste of 20 cut-out designs printed via pochoir by publisher Tériade—Icarus emerged from the artist's innovative "drawing with scissors" technique, adopted after his 1941 cancer surgery limited mobility to bed and wheelchair. Drawing on Greek mythology's tale of Icarus's wax-winged flight toward the sun, the work blends circus-like spectacle, folklore, and personal reverie amid postwar France's fragile renewal, reflecting Fauvism's evolution into pure, liberated abstraction.  Heralding Matisse's late-career triumph, Jazz revolutionized printmaking and collage, with Icarus embodying the era's fusion of joy, risk, and modernist experimentation in the face of mortality.

Interpretation and Meaning

Icarus evokes the rapture of creative risk and passionate abandon through its vertical thrust and crimson focal point, recasting the myth's tragic fall as a metaphor for artistic transcendence, life's perilous highs, and the heart's defiant pulse. The blue expanse and stellar bursts symbolize infinite aspiration and solar allure, harmonizing peril with euphoria to affirm human spirit's resilience. The piece crystallizes modernism's vitality—color as inner fire, form as liberated myth—and persists as an emblem of Matisse's unyielding optimism.

Size

The original cut-out measures composition (irreg.): 41 × 27.8 cm (16 1/8 × 10 15/16 inches); sheet: 42.2 × 65.3 cm (16 5/8 × 25 11/16 inches)