Presenting a selection of masterworks assembled from public and private collections across the world, the new Centre Pompidou's exhibition (Paris, France) examines a distinctive aspect of Matisse’s art: his repeated explorations of the same subject through different treatments – for him a way of exploring art itself. Expressed in variations of framing, draughtsmanship, brushwork and colour, this formal alternation is a recurrent feature of the artist’s work.
The show features some sixty paintings, including four large gouache cutouts, and thirty or so drawings, some brought together for the first time since their creation. It covers the whole of Matisse’s artistic career, from 1899 to 1952, the major periods being represented in chronological order, from the pointillism he experimented with in the summer of 1904 (with two versions of Luxe, Calme et Volupté, here juxtaposed in a rare opportunity for direct comparison) to the ambitious paper cutouts of the 1950s (with the famous Nu bleu series of 1952), taking in on the way the renowned Thèmes et variations series of drawings on paper, a kind of conceptual culmination of the procedure.
The show, entitled Matisse. Paires et séries the degree to which the artist’s work prompted and nourished the development of modern painting, endlessly posing the questions of representation, of realism, and of the relationships between drawing and colour, surface and volume, interiority and exteriority. Developing new formal solutions, putting into question his own, earlier advances, Matisse was a profound student of form.
Date: until 18 June.
Location: Centre Pompidou. Place Georges Pompidou. 75004 Paris, France.
Opening hours: from Monday to Sunday from 11am to 10am.
See some of the artworks in the following slideshow:
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