How Matisse and Picasso turned old age into art

In March 1946 Pablo Picasso paid one of his fortnightly visits to see Henri Matisse in Vence, a few miles inland from Nice. Five years after the medical crisis that had nearly killed him, Matisse, at 76, was still an invalid: he had endured radical colon surgery and much of his work was now done either from a wheelchair or in bed. But, creatively, he was phenomenally fertile in the midst of what he called, with undisguised gratitude and wonder, “his second life”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/59192b0c-b994-11e3-b74f-00144feabdc0.html#slide0