One of my favourite paintings in all the world is by Matisse (La Danse, of which there are two versions, one in MOMA and one in the Hermitage). Of the two, I prefer the MOMA version for its naturalistic colour scheme, but both are stunningly beautiful, capturing the movement of the dancers and the feeling of dancing, and need to be seen live to appreciate their sheer scale.

Towards the end of his life, Matisse’s mobility declined, and he was no longer able to paint. However, he continued to work, making shapes from painted paper. The latest exhibition at Tate Modern is of these cut-out works. Interestingly, he began by using cut-outs to determine the placement of objects in his paintings, and the first room is devoted to exploring this.

Another of the early rooms is devoted to his book Jazz, which used cut-out images from the theatre and the circus alongside his own text, which is fairly stream-of-consciousness and somewhat rambling, on various subjects including his belief in God. The cut-out images are beautiful but fairly simple in these early stages, with leaf-like forms cut out in bright colours. He disliked the fact that the book printed the images as flat images, losing the texture of the cut-outs. Seeing them in person, I understood the criticism. (However, that didn’t stop the Tate from doing the same thing in the exhibition catalogue). The Oceania and Vence rooms continue with fairly simple shapes, albeit with titles such as “The Eskimo” and “Negro Boxer.” These didn’t really grab me terribly.

However, the exhibition becomes much more interesting as we look at cut-out designs for the chapel Matisse designed in Vence. You can see the use of colour and light in the cut-outs, and how they assisted him to anticipate the results in glass. The cut-outs themselves become more sophisticated, and works such as Zulma and Creole Dancer are truly beautiful, the fragility of the material adding to the ephemeral nature of the works.

It is in the Blue Nudes section that the exhibition really comes into its own. Anyone who has wielded a pair of scissors will appreciate the sheer skill required to produce such lines. In a way, the cut-outs are more impressive than his similar paintings, such as La Danse. With painting, one can refine a line, but with cut-outs, it must be done in one attempt. The curves of the women are as skilfully rendered in these as in his painted works.

Towards the end, the cut-outs become larger and more complex, continuing to reflect line and movement. The rotation reflected in works such as The Snail is as clearly set out as it is in La Danse, but the shapes are more abstract and less figurative.

The exhibition ends with a comparison of Matisse’s cut-out for the Christmas Eve stained-glass window, commissioned for the Time-Life Building in New York, and the window itself. It is fascinating to see the relationship between the two, the opacity of the paper compared to the clarity of the stained glass. Recommended.