Join Dennis Raverty for an afternoon art lecture in celebration of this year's Summer Reading theme, Color Your World! No registration required. First come first seated.

When Henri Matisse and his followers exhibited their work at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, they were called Les Fauves--the "Wild Beasts"--because of what the critics perceived as the savagery of their intense and sometimes "unnatural" colors. Matisse went on to become one of the century's greatest masters, and his sophisticated, exuberant use of color is evident behind the mask of this modern "primitive," even when France was occupied by the Nazis. Among his greatest works are the collages he executed during the last decade of his life.

Dennis Raverty is a speaker, author and art historian who for decades has delighted audiences with lively presentations at libraries, churches, synagogues, hostels and business lunches on a variety of topics in the history of art, from the Italian Renaissance to the Harlem Renaissance. His articles and criticism has appeared in Art Journal, Art in America, The International Review of African American Art, Art Criticism, The New Art Examiner, Prospects: An Annual of American Studies, Source: Notes in the History of Art, and Art Papers, where he was a contributing editor. He authored four entries for the most recent edition of the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, published by Oxford University Press (2011).