Matisse Cut-Outs 40th EdToward the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush for long. In this late phase of his lifehe was almost 80 years of agehe developed the technique of carving into color, creating bright, bold paper cut outs. Though dismissed by some contemporary critics as the folly of a senile old man, these gouaches decoupes (gouache cut outs) in fact represented a