Some of the most copied images in modern interiors were made with scissors by a man in his seventies. Henri Matisse's paper cut-outs — blue nudes, coral fronds, stars and birds on bright grounds — are simple enough to read from across a room and strong enough to carry a whole wall.
How the cut-outs came about
Matisse (1869–1954) had already spent fifty years as one of the leading painters of his time when a major operation in 1941 left him largely confined to bed or a wheelchair. Painting at an easel became difficult. Instead, he had assistants paint sheets of paper with gouache in the colours he chose, then cut shapes directly from the coloured paper and directed where they should be pinned on the wall. He called it drawing with scissors.
What started as a workaround became the last great chapter of his career. The book Jazz (1947) collected twenty cut-out plates. The chapel in Vence, designed between 1948 and 1951, took the same shapes into stained glass. The four Blue Nudes of 1952, and The Snail of 1953, are among the best-known images in twentieth-century art.
Matisse died in November 1954. Under the EU rule of the author's lifetime plus seventy years, his work entered the public domain on 1 January 2025 — which is why faithful Matisse prints have become much more widely available in the last year. Our Matisse collection holds both his own motifs and new designs made in the papier découpé manner.
Papier Decoupe Coral Flower Poster
Matisse Blue Nude
Black Papier Decoupe Poster
Matisse Inspired Orange Sun Poster
Matisse Inspired Orange Flower Poster
Matisse Inspired Birds II Poster
Why they work as posters
They were flat to begin with. A painting loses brushwork and texture when it is printed. A cut-out is flat colour against flat colour, so a good print gets very close to the look of the original.
They are made of a few shapes. One figure, a handful of leaves, a border. That reads clearly at every size from A4 to 100×140, and it makes the prints easy to combine with each other.
The colours are honest. Pure blue, coral, black, orange, lemon. They work in minimal white rooms and in warmer interiors with wood and linen, because the palette is clean without being cold.
Choosing a size and a colour
| Motif | Best sizes | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Single figure (Blue Nude type) | 50×70, 70×100 | Living room, above a sideboard |
| Coral and leaf forms | 30×42, 50×70 | Bathroom, kitchen, hallway |
| Busy compositions with many shapes | 50×70 and up | Where there is room to step back |
Take the room's colour from the print, not the other way round. A coral cut-out on grey suits a room with terracotta and sand; a blue figure on white suits a cooler, brighter room. The blue and terracotta guides go further.
Frames
Oak is almost always right: the pale wood picks up the paper feel of the originals. A thin black frame suits the black cut-outs and the blue figures in a monochrome room. A white frame with a white wall makes the shape float — good for a single coral or leaf. Avoid heavy ornate frames; the cut-outs were made to be pinned directly to the wall, and a gilded moulding fights that. See oak or black frames for the general rule.
Grouping
Cut-outs are one of the few styles that work well as a set. Three prints of the same size, in a row, with 5–7 cm between them, give a calm and very graphic wall — the spacing is covered in the spacing guide. Mix one figure with two leaf forms rather than three figures; variation in shape is what keeps the row alive.