The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead

In The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead, award-winning author of Anne Frank Remembered and The Devil€s Mistress, Alison Leslie Gold presents the life of nun-cum-artist€s model Claude Boule. Inspired by a true story and told in spare, evocative prose, this improbable, color-soaked life arc spans the art of Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol, a convent in 1930s Nice, wartime Lyon, postwar Paris, New York in the dazzling 60s on to millennium€s end. The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead explores the abstruse relationship between artist and model: Who transfixes whom? The incidental, often travail-filled, life of Claude Boule €“ impenetrable and inscrutable €“ serves as a poignant foil for intimate views into the creative processes and behind-the-scenes life of one of the 20th century€s most momentous artists. The brash assemblage of The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead also encompasses diverse uncelebrated but no less vividly tinctured people whose lives were touched €“ erotically, devoutly, unscrupulously and in other often unpredictable ways €“ by the model€s.