In this print from 1929, Henri Matisse rendered a female nude in the smooth, undulating lines that also appear in his drawings and paintings. The years between 1917 and 1930 are considered Matisse’s early Nice period. His work at this time predominantly consists of renderings of the female figure, such as the sitting figure in Nu assis, le torse appuyé sur les genoux, 1929, and images of odalisques.

“The experience of another person,” Donald Judd wrote, “is ordinarily difficult to gain and impossible if the person lived in the past. I could never have imagined someone imagining the shapes Matisse was so fond of. The experience of another time and society, which is tenuous since so little is known, can nevertheless, almost uniquely, be gained through art.”¹

¹ Donald Judd, “Art and Architecture” (1983), in Donald Judd Writings, ed. Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray (New York: Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, 2016), 347.