Henri Matisse was one of the most famous painters of the twentieth century. He used bold colors and simplified shapes. But in his seventies, he became very ill. Surgery left him unable to stand at an easel or hold a brush for long periods. Many artists would have retired. Matisse found a completely new way to create. He began cutting shapes out of painted paper. Using large scissors, he cut leaves, flowers, corals, and abstract forms from sheets of paper that his assistants had painted in vivid colors. He called this technique "painting with scissors." Matisse would arrange the shapes on his walls, directing assistants to move them until the composition felt right. Some of his cut-outs were enormous. *The Snail*, completed in 1953, measures nearly nine feet square. It shows a spiral arrangement of colorful rectangles and triangles that suggest the shell of a snail without actually drawing one. Critics who had followed Matisse's long career were amazed. The cut-outs were not a step backward. They were a breakthrough. By removing the brush from the process, Matisse had found a way to work directly with color and shape. He died on November 3, 1954, at the age of eighty-four.