Take what you need from this course which explores the colour and ambiguities of space in the still-life paintings of Henri Matisse, and how these works influenced late twentieth-century painters such as Hans Hofmann, Richard Diebenkorn, and Nicolas de Staël.

The course begins by examining how Matisse combined an understanding of the ambiguities of space found in the flat colour planes of Van Gogh with the spatial contradictions of Cézanne and the work of the eighteenth-century still-life painter Jean-Baptiste Chardin. The aim is to understand how Matisse drew on these influences to develop the idea of space in painting further, creating original expressions of colour within his own unique sense of depth. This is partly explained by the concept of “push and pull” space, a term introduced by Hans Hofmann in the 1940s.

Course Structure Day 1 - Analyse one or more paintings or artists of your choice.

Day 2 - Working from a still life, you will experiment, merging your own ideas with ideas formed from Day 1, to produce preparatory studies that explore colour and depth.

Day 3 - Using the studies developed on Day 2, create a larger-scale still-life painting of your own.