Editing Henri Matisse (section)

==World War II years==
Matisse's wife Amélie, who suspected that he was having an affair with her young Russian emigre companion, [[Lydia Delectorskaya]], ended their 41-year marriage in July 1939, dividing their possessions equally between them. Delectorskaya attempted suicide by shooting herself in the chest; remarkably, she survived with no serious after-effects, and returned to Matisse and worked with him for the rest of his life, running his household, paying the bills, typing his correspondence, keeping meticulous records, assisting in the studio, and coordinating his business affairs.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.henri-matisse.net/biography.html|title=Biography of Henri Matisse|access-date=26 October 2015|archive-date=12 July 2016|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160712053009/http://www.henri-matisse.net/biography.html}}</ref>

Matisse was visiting Paris when [[the Nazis invaded France]] in June 1940, but managed to make his way back to Nice. His son, Pierre, by then a gallery owner in New York, begged him to flee while he could. Matisse was about to depart for Brazil to escape the occupation of France but changed his mind and remained in Nice, in [[Vichy France]]. In September 1940, he wrote Pierre: "It seemed to me as if I would be deserting. If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?" Although he was never a member of the resistance, it became a point of pride to the occupied French that one of their most acclaimed artists chose to stay.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kramer|first=Hilton|date=March 1992|title=Art & politics in the Vichy period|url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/1992/3/art-politics-in-the-vichy-period|access-date=2021-11-03|website=newcriterion.com|language=en}}</ref>

While the Nazis occupied France from 1940 to 1944, they were more lenient in their attacks on "degenerate art" in Paris than they were in the German-speaking nations under their military dictatorship. Matisse was allowed to exhibit, along with other former Fauves and Cubists whom Hitler had initially claimed to despise, although without any Jewish artists, all of whose works had been purged from all French museums and galleries; any French artists exhibiting in France had to sign an oath assuring their "Aryan" status, including Matisse.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pryce-Jones |first=David |date=1981 |title=Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation, 1940–1944 |publisher=Holt, Rinehart & Winston |page=220 }}</ref> He also worked as a graphic artist and produced black-and-white illustrations for several books and over one hundred original lithographs at the [[Mourlot Studios]] in Paris.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}}

In 1941, Matisse was diagnosed with [[duodenal cancer]]. The surgery, while successful, resulted in serious complications from which he nearly died.<ref>Daniels, Patricia. "Matisse: A biography".</ref> Being bedridden for three months resulted in his developing a new art form using paper and scissors.<ref>{{Citation |last=Lacayo |first=Richard |title=The Paper Chase. At MOMA, a dazzling display of Matisse's blissful "Cut-Outs" |date=2014-11-03 |url=http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b7042fdd-9be3-4b29-a6ee-e74ae11a90ed%40sessionmgr113&vid=10&hid=125 |access-date=2015-04-09 }}</ref>

That same year, a nursing student named Monique Bourgeois responded to an advertisement placed by Matisse for a nurse. A platonic friendship developed between Matisse and Bourgeois. He discovered that she was an amateur artist and taught her about perspective. After Bourgeois left the position to join a convent in 1944, Matisse sometimes contacted her to request that she model for him. Bourgeois became a [[Dominican Order|Dominican]] nun in 1946, and Matisse painted a chapel in Vence, a small town he moved to in 1943, in her honor.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}}

Matisse remained, for the most part, isolated in southern France throughout the war, but his family was intimately involved with the French resistance. His son Pierre, the art dealer in New York, helped the Jewish and anti-Nazi French artists he represented to escape occupied France and enter the United States. In 1942, Pierre held an exhibition in New York, "[[Artists in Exile]]", which was to become legendary. Matisse's estranged wife, Amélie, was a typist for the French Underground and jailed for six months. Matisse was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in the [[Résistance]] during the war, was tortured (almost to death) by the Gestapo in a Rennes prison and sentenced to the [[Ravensbrück concentration camp]] in Germany.<ref name=kuester/> Marguerite managed to escape from the train to Ravensbrück, which was halted during an Allied air raid; she survived in the woods in the chaos of the closing days of the war until rescued by fellow resisters.<ref>Heftrig, Ruth; Olaf Peters; Barbara Maria Schellewald [editors] (2008), ''Kunstgeschichte im "Dritten Reich": Theorien, Methoden, Praktiken'', Akademie Verlag, p. 429; Spurling, Hilary, ''Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909–1954'', p.424.</ref> Matisse's student [[Rudolf Levy]] was killed in the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]] in 1944.<ref name="Gilbert02">{{cite book|last=Gilbert|first=Martin|author-link=Martin Gilbert|title=The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pYs5OSnsrHwC&q=The+Routledge+atlas+of+the+Holocaust|year=2002|publisher=[[Psychology Press]]|isbn=978-0-415-28145-4|page=10}}</ref><ref name="Ruhrberg">{{cite book|last=Ruhrberg|first=Karl|title=Twentieth Century art: Painting and Sculpture in the Ludwig Museum|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VqRPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22rudolf+levy%22+|year=1986|publisher=[[RCS MediaGroup|Rizzoli]]|isbn=978-0-8478-0755-0|page=55}}</ref>