Matisse's War

(Paperback)

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Description

At seventy, Henri Matisse is a trim, clean old gentleman with a passion for naked women. He is UN MONSTRE SACRE who depicts with passion and conviction only what he takes pleasure in, only what he chooses to see. He is art personified. If there were no Matisse there would be no art as such. . . . He has purged everything from his painting except anxieties concerning structure and colour; his struggle is with these alone! MATISSE'S WAR is a minutely researched yet fictional account of Matisse's life during the years 1939-1945. It is also a superb portrait of the lives of the major French artists and writers under the German occupation. Louis Aragon, Malraux, Picasso and Bonnard all appear prominently in the narrative.

Reviews

Brilliant, fiercely intelligent and moving -- A.S.Byatt
A truly persuasive evocation of artistic France in the last war... A brilliant recreation of a lost period -- John Fowles, Books of the Year * Guardian *
A remarkable and very good writer... Everett writes with a rare vividness. He takes a sensuous pleasure in what he sees, and he has a fine ability to translate this into words that have the immediacy of one of Matisse's paintings -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *
An extraordinary feat of historical and artistic imagining -- Anton Nickson * Time Out *

Author Bio

Peter Everett was born in Hull, east Yorkshire in 1931, and began writing at the age of nineteen. He is the author of seven previous novels: A Day of Dwarfs, The Instrument, Negatives (which won the 1964 Somerset Maugham Award), A Death in Ireland, The Fetch, Visions of Heydritch and Matisse's War. He has also written for both television and radio. He lives in Sheffield.