Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (1869 – 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse
The author, Alfred Hamilton Barr, Jr. (1902 – 1981) was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of popular attitudes toward modern art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_H._Barr,_Jr.
Bibliography: p. 564-574
Four hundred and ninety five copies of this first edition of Matisse his and and his public each signed by the author and each containing an original lithograph by Henri Matisse have been issued by the trustees of the Museum of Modern art in December, 1951. This is number 350
