In January 1941, the 72-year-old Matisse returned from a doctor’s visit with an ominous diagnosis: duodenal cancer. Though the surgery to remove the rare intestinal cancer ended up saving his life, the elderly artist nearly died from complications. Afterwards, he had to spend his remaining years either in bed or a wheelchair.
But rather than let his bedridden state mark the end of his creative output, though, Matisse saw it as an opportunity for new beginnings. He reorganized his bedroom so that everything he needed to make art was within reach: a bedside table with drawers containing art supplies; a revolving bookcase holding classics and dictionaries; and a wooden board placed atop his knees, upon which he made sketches and sculptures. For paintings and larger drawings, Matisse would attach a paintbrush or pieces of charcoal to the edge of a long pole, allowing him to reach the easel at the end of his bed.
Even as his physical condition deteriorated further, forcing him to eventually give up painting, Matisse continued to make art in the form of cut-outs, a cut-paper technique he first explored in the previous decade. Now, the artist had assistants pre-paint pieces of paper with gouache in his preferred hues, which he would cut into various shapes and paste onto paper, all from the comfort of his bed. This allowed the artist to create art on a scale more monumental than ever before, despite his limited mobility. Some works, like Swimming Pool (1952), measured up to 54 feet in width.
In letters to his son Pierre, the elder Matisse described this unexpected creative outburst post-surgery. “I’m still here. I concentrate on one thing only—my work, for which I live,” he wrote. “From the point of view of my mental balance, my operation was quite extraordinary. It gave me a new equilibrium. It put my ideas in order. It gave me a second life.”