{"title":"Modern \u0026 Abstract: Pure Form and Primary Colour","description":"\u003cp\u003eSomewhere in the first half of the twentieth century the picture stopped pretending to be a window. Kandinsky let colour and circle ring on their own. Mondrian reduced painting to the upright, the level and three primaries. Matisse, too ill to stand at an easel, cut his shapes straight out of painted paper. What is left is form and colour, with nothing behind them — which is exactly what a curved white cup wants.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"henri-matisse-la-gerbe","title":"Henri Matisse: La Gerbe, 1953 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLa Gerbe\u003c\/em\u003e (The Sheaf) was completed by Henri Matisse in 1953, the year before his death, when he was eighty-three years old and had been working almost exclusively in cut-outs for a decade. Unable to stand at an easel, Matisse directed his assistants from a wheelchair or his bed, working at a scale and with a freedom that belied his physical circumstances. The cut-out method — scissors moving through sheets of paper painted in pure gouache — had become, in his own words, \"cutting directly into colour,\" an act closer to sculpting than to painting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLa Gerbe\u003c\/em\u003e is among the largest and most exuberant of the late cut-outs: leaf and frond forms in vivid greens, blacks, and whites fan outward like a burst of botanical energy. It was first published in the final issue of the journal \u003cem\u003eVerve\u003c\/em\u003e dedicated to Matisse's last works (1950–54) and subsequently reproduced as a lithograph. The composition distils Matisse's lifelong preoccupation with the decorative — not as ornament but as a primary expressive mode, as serious and as demanding as any other.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHenri Matisse, \u003cem\u003eLa Gerbe\u003c\/em\u003e (The Sheaf), 1953, published in \u003cem\u003eVerve: Last Works of Matisse 1950–1954\u003c\/em\u003e. Public domain in Switzerland, the EU and the United Kingdom; Matisse died in 1954. This mug is not sold into the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Fine Porcelain — 10 oz","offer_id":57724211593547,"sku":"2aacb779-b3be-4f20-a2c8-410718b83254","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/72b1004b-2693-4492-b1ab-96e5ad8821ed.jpg?v=1787638566"},{"product_id":"henri-matisse-the-snail","title":"Henri Matisse: The Snail, 1953 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy 1948, Matisse could no longer stand at an easel. Confined to his bed following surgery, he turned to scissors and painted paper — and produced some of the most joyful work of his life. \u003cem\u003eL'Escargot\u003c\/em\u003e (The Snail), made in 1953 at the Hôtel Régina in Nice, is among the last and most luminous of these cut-outs: a spiral of pure colour that radiates outward with quiet authority.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe lithograph edition was published in 1958 by Mourlot Frères of Paris for \u003cem\u003eVerve\u003c\/em\u003e magazine (Vol. IX, No. 35\/36), under the title \u003cem\u003eThe Last Works of Henri Matisse\u003c\/em\u003e, edited by Tériade. The original is held in the Tate Modern, London. This mug reproduces the 1958 Mourlot lithograph.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHenri Matisse, \u003cem\u003eL'Escargot\u003c\/em\u003e, 1953; colour lithograph, Mourlot Frères for \u003cem\u003eVerve\u003c\/em\u003e vol. IX, no. 35\/36, 1958. Public domain in Switzerland, the EU and the United Kingdom; Matisse died in 1954. This mug is not sold into the United States. Matisse's name identifies the historical artwork; it does not suggest endorsement or affiliation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Fine Porcelain — 10 oz","offer_id":57724211691851,"sku":"230955c3-a882-41c4-9593-af8717a59117","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/8a5dc929-f8a0-4714-9852-898ed1e92dde.jpg?v=1786709341"},{"product_id":"henri-matisse-blue-nude-ii-mug","title":"Henri Matisse: Blue Nude II, 1952 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe four \u003cem\u003eBlue Nudes\u003c\/em\u003e (1952) are among the most commanding achievements of Matisse's final period, made when he was eighty-two years old and had been working almost exclusively in the cut-out technique for a decade. The figures are composed entirely from shapes cut from paper painted in a single shade of cerulean blue — the cutting and arranging serving simultaneously as drawing and painting, the process by which Matisse arrived at forms that could not have been achieved by any other means. The \u003cem\u003eBlue Nudes\u003c\/em\u003e were not made as a series but as independent explorations of the same problem: how to render the human figure through cut colour alone, stripping away everything that conventional representation would regard as necessary.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlue Nude II\u003c\/em\u003e shows a seated female figure in a pose that reconfigures bodily weight and volume into something simultaneously anatomical and abstract — the body understood as a set of planar relationships rather than as a described surface. The version reproduced here is the colour lithograph published in \u003cem\u003eVerve\u003c\/em\u003e, Volume IX, Numbers 35–36 (\u003cem\u003eDernières Oeuvres de Matisse 1950–54\u003c\/em\u003e), 1958, which disseminated the cut-outs to an international audience after Matisse's death. The lithograph measures 36.5 × 27 cm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHenri Matisse, \u003cem\u003eBlue Nude II\u003c\/em\u003e, 1952; colour lithograph published in \u003cem\u003eVerve\u003c\/em\u003e, vol. IX, nos. 35–36, 1958. Public domain in Switzerland, the EU and the United Kingdom; Matisse died in 1954. This mug is not sold into the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Fine Porcelain — 10 oz","offer_id":57723585331531,"sku":"af75be17-b584-44e6-8a30-2b4ea41c15b5","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/a3582038-d81a-49b1-b491-f2e2200a5bba.jpg?v=1786718343"},{"product_id":"kandinsky-concentric-rings-mug","title":"Wassily Kandinsky: Concentric Rings, 1913 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eA grid of squares, each holding a target of coloured rings in a different combination. It is not a finished painting but an investigation — a systematic test of how colours behave when placed next to one another — and it is simultaneously a scientific document and an object of remarkable visual intensity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) made \u003cem\u003eFarbstudie – Quadrate mit konzentrischen Ringen\u003c\/em\u003e in 1913, at a moment of decisive transition. He had recently completed \u003cem\u003eÜber das Geistige in der Kunst\u003c\/em\u003e, the text in which he argued that colour and form could act directly on the viewer's emotions without the mediation of representational subject matter. By 1913 he was already producing his first fully abstract compositions — the \u003cem\u003eImprovisations\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eCompositions\u003c\/em\u003e — and the colour studies of this period were the systematic groundwork for that leap. Each ring carries what Kandinsky believed was an intrinsic emotional charge; the relationships between them were as carefully considered as the intervals in a musical score. The work is held at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWassily Kandinsky, \u003cem\u003eFarbstudie – Quadrate mit konzentrischen Ringen\u003c\/em\u003e, 1913. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. Public domain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Fine Porcelain — 10 oz","offer_id":57723314012491,"sku":"845bcf1d-5190-45bc-a96e-152ffbd6935e","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/Kandinsky_Mug_front_v3.jpg?v=1787128067"},{"product_id":"henri-matisse-les-velours-mug","title":"Henri Matisse: Les Velours, 1947 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eHenri Matisse completed \u003cem\u003eComposition (Les velours)\u003c\/em\u003e in 1947, the same year he published \u003cem\u003eJazz\u003c\/em\u003e and at the height of his engagement with the cut-out technique he had been developing since the early 1940s. The work is an extended horizontal composition — some 239 centimetres wide — made from shapes cut from paper painted in gouache, mounted on painted paper ground. The forms Matisse arrived at are simultaneously organic and abstract: they suggest algae, antlers, plant fronds, and purely invented shapes in equal measure, expanding and contracting across the long format with the rhythmic freedom that the scissors-and-paper method permitted. There is no preparatory drawing, no correction: the cutting is the drawing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLes velours\u003c\/em\u003e entered the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1954, where it remains. Its scale makes it primarily a work for institutional experience, but the individual forms translate with surprising vitality to smaller formats — their internal logic, the relationship between figure and ground, the counterpoint of positive and negative shapes, survives the change of scale. Matisse at eighty was working at a size and with an ambition that younger artists might have envied.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHenri Matisse, \u003cem\u003eComposition (Les velours)\u003c\/em\u003e, 1947, gouache on paper cutout, mounted on painted paper. Kunstmuseum Basel. Public domain in Switzerland, the EU and the United Kingdom; Matisse died in 1954. This mug is not sold into the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Fine Porcelain — 10 oz","offer_id":57724211626315,"sku":"8bef00d6-9498-4c72-9286-ce379037546f","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/LesVelours_Mug_front_v3.jpg?v=1787140187"},{"product_id":"piet-mondrian-lozenge-composition-1921-porcelain-art-mug","title":"Piet Mondrian: Lozenge Composition, 1921 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eMondrian turned the canvas, not the picture. In 1921 he took a square stretcher, hung it on one corner, and kept the lines inside it strictly upright and level — so the grid runs true to the world while the edges of the painting cross it at forty-five degrees. No line meets a corner; each one simply leaves. He made some seventeen of these diamond paintings and regarded them as among his most demanding.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe year matters. Mondrian had come back to Paris from wartime Holland in 1919, and by 1921 his mature vocabulary had settled: black bands of unequal weight, planes of white and grey, and the three primaries — yellow at the upper left, a small red wedge at the foot, blue closing the right-hand corner. He signed it at the lowest point, where the two bottom edges meet: PM 21.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe mug carries the painting whole. Nothing is cropped and nothing is turned: the canvas was lifted off the grey ground of the museum photograph and set on the white of the porcelain, standing on its point at the centre of the front, at the same height as every other work in this collection. The last gallery image shows the photograph it came from.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePiet Mondrian, \u003cem\u003eLozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray\u003c\/em\u003e, 1921; oil on canvas, 60 × 60 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., 1957.307. Public domain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58252800655691,"sku":"01bc4191-2e52-499f-8e1d-26155e4f3adc","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/8b0dcde9-7bf2-4355-a1bc-7c4e3b36a3e4.webp?v=1787686480"},{"product_id":"piet-mondrian-composition-with-red-yellow-and-blue-1927-porcelain-art-mug","title":"Piet Mondrian: Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue, 1927 – Porcelain Art Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the picture most people mean when they say Mondrian. A square canvas of about fifty centimetres, a few black bands of unequal weight, and three colours that are mixed with nothing: red in the upper left, yellow held in a narrow strip at the right edge, blue lying along the bottom. Everything else is white and grey.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe balance is not symmetry. Mondrian set the largest field off centre, gave the left column its own width, and let the yellow run as a sliver rather than a block — so the weight of the small red square at the top is answered by the long blue at the foot. He called this equilibrium, and meant it as a way of seeing rather than a style. By 1927 he had been working at it for nearly a decade in his Paris studio on the rue du Départ, where he arranged the walls, the furniture and the easel by the same rules.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe painting reaches the mug straight. The museum photograph was taken slightly off-axis, so it was rectified from its four corners: the black bands now stand truly upright and level on the porcelain, and the canvas is shown whole, its own worn edges included, at the same height as every other work in this collection. The last gallery image shows the photograph it came from.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePiet Mondrian, \u003cem\u003eComposition with Red, Yellow, and Blue\u003c\/em\u003e, 1927; oil on canvas, 49.5 × 49.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.215. Public domain (CC0).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSelected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58252805112139,"sku":"dd952b5a-9b9d-4281-a5c6-acac7d4d8da3","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/062bef77-bbaa-466d-bbd3-3d312231d4a2.webp?v=1787686690"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/collections\/8b0dcde9-7bf2-4355-a1bc-7c4e3b36a3e4.webp?v=1787687149","url":"https:\/\/tazzarte.com\/collections\/modern-abstract.oembed","provider":"Tazzarte","version":"1.0","type":"link"}