Matisse's Garden
by Samantha Friedman
illustrations by Cristina Amodeo

One day, the artist Henri Matisse cut a small bird out of a piece of paper. It looked lonely all by itself, so he cut out more shapes to join it. Before he knew it, Matisse had transformed his walls into larger-than-life gardens, filled with brightly colored plants, animals, and shapes of all sizes! Featuring cut-paper illustrations and interactive foldout pages, Matisse’s Garden is the inspiring story of how the artist’s never-ending curiosity helped turn a small experiment into a radical new form of art.

“Amodeo’s elegant cutouts pay homage to the great artist by illustrating the evolution of Matisse’s use of this medium… The artwork is so skillfully applied and photographed that the illusion of cut-paper shapes is maintained throughout.”
Kirkus Starred Review

“Amodeo fully captures Matisse's inventive joy with her cut-paper illustrations, which work beautifully with the text and pop from the pages with brilliant, vivid colors, and kinetic energy. (…) Excellent.”
School Library Journal

“L’albo è imponente, abbagliante, attraente, soprattutto grazie alle morbide e vivide figure create con i collage da Cristina Amodeo.”
MilkBook

Inside Matisse’s Garden: read an interview with the authors on MoMA’s blog
 

Awards:

★ BIB – Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava 2017 – selected in the Italian IBBY shortlist
★ Le Immagini della Fantasia 34, Sarmede (Italy) - selected in the 2016 exhibition
★ Libros infantiles y Juveniles Mejor Editados en 2017 - second prize from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Spain

Rights:

World: MoMA, 2015
Other editions: Italian, French, German, Korean
For foreign rights inquiries, please contact MoMA Publications.

Other Books by Cristina Amodeo: