Henri Matisse, designer

Here Henri Matisse creates an overall sense of the chaotic atmosphere of the center ring, with harsh red slashes and black undulating forms which almost obscure the elephant who stands on a ball in the background.

In 1943, at the age of 74, Matisse began work on the portfolio Jazz, 20 prints of circus and theater images accompanied by texts and poems. His “crystallizations of memories of the circus” were designed using paper cutouts, which Matisse arranged as collages. Assistants then prepared the collages for printing using a stencil process called pochoir.