The Matisse Response is the process through which artists adapt and move beyond mobility restrictions. This space aims to depict how courageous and inventive artists have surpassed physical limitations to continue to create.
Henri Matisse is said to have completed his most expressive work, his cutouts, after he became bed and wheelchair ridden 1941.
In 1959, while traveling and painting in Greece, Blaine contracted paralytic polio. She spent eight months in a hospital in New York. She was told she was never to walk or paint again. With therapy and perseverance, she taught herself how to paint oils with the left hand and continue to sketch and use watercolors with the right. She adapted her easels, palettes and surfaces to positions that would allow her to work sitting on her wheelchair for the rest of her life.
Imber was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) a progressive and degenerative condition that destroys nerve cells that control muscle movement. He found ways to paint until the end of his life. One of the clearest appliers of The Matisse Response.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1840, Candido Lopez worked as a portraitist. In 1865 he enlisted in the army to fight and make sketches from the War in Paraguay. While acting as a lieutenant, he made sketches of battle grounds and battalions while resting. After a year of fighting, his right hand was blown off by a shrapnel. His treatments and recovery were long and painful. When he returned to Buenos Aires, he taught himself how to paint with his left hand. He went on to complete over 50 large oils of the conflict.
In 1988 Chuck Close suffers partial paralysis due to a spinal artery collapse. Among major abilities, he loses the strength to hold the brush. He continues to paint. In this 1995 photo Mark Lenninhan captures Close using a hand brace to hold his paint brush. He adjusts the brush with his teeth.