The Snail

1953
Gouache on paper, cut and pasted on paper mounted on canvas

Style/Movement: Fauve, Post-Impressionist

Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1962

T00540

The Snail is one of the last and largest pieces in Matisse’s final series of works, known as cutouts. Confined to bed through illness, he had assistants paint sheets of paper in gouache which he then cut. The shell of a snail inspired the spiraling arrangement of roughly cut pieces of paper. Compared to his earlier paintings, Matisse believed that he had gained ‘greater completeness and abstraction’ in the cutouts. ‘I have attained a form filtered to its essentials’, he remarked.
(From the display caption July 2008)