Faces

This illustrated book is unique because Matisse’s friend the poet Pierre Reverdy created a text to accompany Matisse’s images. Somewhat earlier Matisse had created a series of lithographs representing one of his female models, and their existence prompted a publishers to suggest printing them as a collector’s edition. For the general design, Matisse followed his usual practice of creating appropriate ornaments and of combining these with images and text in the order he saw fit.