Essay Database

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…sively straightened and the axis of the spine becomes the increasing focus of the composition. The four panels were executed over a twenty-year span, with each successive image reworked from a plaster cast of the preceding one. The Backs were never shown together during Matisse's lifetime and were not conceived as a series or set. Rather, they should be regarded as one work that passed through four stages-an ongoing sculptural clarification of the artist's vision.