Following a major cancer surgery in 1941, the French Fauvist master Henri Matisse became largely confined to a wheelchair and his bed. When painting at an easel or carving sculpture became physically impossible, he developed a technique that transformed his artistic language: Paper Cutouts (gouaches découpées). Using scissors, he cut directly into large sheets of paper pre-painted with opaque gouache by his assistants, and arranged them into monumental collages. Matisse defined this process as 'drawing with scissors' and 'cutting directly into colour'.

The most celebrated series in this medium is the *Blue Nudes* (*Nus bleus*) of 1952. *Blue Nude II* (*Nu bleu II*) revisits the seated female nude pose that Matisse had explored in paintings and sculptures throughout his career. By cutting blue painted paper and pasting it onto a white background, Matisse used the negative white spaces between the cut shapes to define joints, limbs, and volume. Despite the flatness of the paper, the work conveys a powerful sense of relief and physical presence.

Matisse's cutouts were his way of resolving the long-standing conflict between line and colour. By cutting, the contour (line) and the colour were created simultaneously, in a single gesture. Other monumental late works created with this technique, such as *The Snail* (*L'escargot*, 1953) and *The Sorrow of the King* (*La Tristesse du Roi*, 1952), became highly influential for abstract art and modern decorative design.

Held in the collections of Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou, these works stand as inspiring proof of how physical limitations can give birth to a completely new and liberating artistic language.