…showed first 75 words of 449 total…

…showed last 75 words of 449 total…sively straightened and the axis of the spine becomes the increasing focus of the composition. The four panels were executed over a twenty-year span, with each successive image reworked from a plaster cast of the preceding one. The Backs were never shown together during Matisse's lifetime and were not conceived as a series or set. Rather, they should be regarded as one work that passed through four stages-an ongoing sculptural clarification of the artist's vision.