Henri Matisse didn't just use colour. He weaponised it.
While the art world was still playing by the rules, Matisse was throwing them out entirely - slapping pure, unmixed, gloriously unbothered colour onto canvas and daring anyone to tell him it was wrong. They called his movement Fauvism, from the French for "wild beasts." He took it as a compliment.
Born in northern France, Matisse abandoned law for art... apparently a recurring theme among the greats and spent the next six decades rewriting what painting could be. Alongside Picasso he became one of the twin poles of 20th century modern art, each pushing the other to go further, weirder, bolder.
But perhaps his most extraordinary chapter came last. Confined to a wheelchair in his eighties, Matisse simply invented a new medium, cutting shapes from painted paper with scissors, creating compositions of such joyful, radical simplicity that they still stop people dead in galleries today. He called it "drawing with scissors." We call it refusing to be diminished.
The King of Colour. A genuine original. And proof that your best work might still be ahead of you.