Matisse - Cutouts: Templates for cut-out collages after Henri Matisse

This resource is developed as an art project inspired by the artist Henri Matisse. The project helps children to explore color and shape in a fun and easy way. The templates are suitable for making solo and group work collages!

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Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) counts, alongside Pablo Picasso, among the most important artists of the modern movement. His pictures are much loved due to their warm colors and playful motifs. Matisse fell ill in 1941 and from that time on spent his life in a wheelchair. Since he found it difficult to work with a brush he began “to paint with scissors” – that is, to cut out bits of paper like he’d once done as a child.

He had large sheets of paper painted monochrome (one color) in deep colors with water-based paint. Then he cut out abstract forms with scissors by hand and, with the help of his assistant, moved them around on the large background sheets until he was pleased with the composition. The goal was to arrive at a balance of form and color, and it could take months for a composition to come together. In doing so, he used both the positive forms (what he’d cut out) and the negative forms (the leftover parts). This technique is known as gouaches découpés – what we call ‘gouache cutouts’ in English.

Matisse, who was already world-renowned before his illness, gathered his forces and despite his illness renewed his art practice to create a totally new world of absolute simplicity. At first, he was ridiculed for these new pictures, since cutting out paper was familiar to all from elementary school or kindergarten. Despite this, his joyfully colored pictures became much loved and very famous. They radiate a carefree lightness that you’d hardly expect from a sick old man. They are pictures that immediately spring to mind when you hear the name Matisse.

How to do it (with colored paper)

1. Print out the desired motif page on colored copy paper.
2. Cut out the rectangular motif areas along the solid outlines.
3. Carefully cut out all of the Matisse motifs, making sure to keep the offcuts.
4. Print out the background sheets on different colored copy paper.
5. Cut out all the background areas along the solid outlines.
6. For group work the backgrounds should be arranged and glued onto a large sheet of stiff packing paper or light card.
7. Lastly, arrange and stick the Matisse motifs and offcuts onto the background sheets.