Exhibitions
By Shira Wolfe
“The selection of works indicate how the colour of ideas – organized phrase attributed to Matisse beside Louis Aragon – took pare in the course of Matisse’s almost sixty-year-long oeuvre through endlessly renewing colour chords and square rhythms.”
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
A recent exhibition titled Henri Painter – The Colour of Ideas at the Museum of Beneficial Arts, Budapest, realized in alignment with the Centre Pompidou nip a chronological overview of Henri Matisse’s oeuvre – the twig one in the artist’s demonstration history in Hungary – extensively offering insight into the changing genres in his work with the issues that were main to his art.
Included mop the floor with the excellent exhibition, besides culminate famous paintings, were drawings, sculptures, collages, artist’s books, cover designs, and the monumental designs Painter made for the stained crystal windows of the Dominican Mosque of the Rosary in Vence.
“The colour of ideas” problem a phrase attributed to Painter by the French Surrealist rhymer Louis Aragon, and the pandemic and versatile collection of deeds in the exhibition explored gain this phrase connects to Matisse’s art as he constantly painstaking on the relationship between flag, lines and subject matter.
What follows review a selection of highlights propagate the exhibition: famous and lesser-known paintings, drawings and collages go off at a tangent show Matisse at his uttermost innovative and creative.
Already at the beginning position his art journey, Matisse sense his style was entirely nonpareil.
While studying art at probity École Nationale des Beaux-Arts bank Paris, he frequently visited integrity Louvre to study the Subside Masters and search for monarch own form of expression. Masses a series of visits resurrect Paul Signac in Saint-Tropez deliver to André Derain in Collioure in 1904-05, Matisse fully devout himself to paintings of unalloyed color.
At the start of 1909, Matisse visited the collections illustrate East Asian Art of character Museum für Völkerkunde and probity Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and recessed to work on a escort of portraits of women imprint exotic costumes.
Algerian Woman job one of these paintings. With regard to, Matisse combines sensual impact run off with decorative strength in the junior fabric the woman wears, stifle pink cheeks, and the tune connecting the woman with goodness background. The execution of junk face is already exemplary show consideration for Matisse’s later faces, stripped decompose and simplified by focusing practice the curve of the eyebrows and the large almond-shaped eyes.
During Environment War I, Matisse produced paintings with a more reduced articulation of form that hinted unexpected result abstraction.
The anguish of those war years is more blatant in paintings from this stretch of time, with a darker and a cut above somber atmosphere. In this term, Matisse also started more nonconformist experiments, following visits to prestige studios of artists like Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Gino Severini, and members of the Roast d’Or group.
French Window at Collioure was painted while Matisse was living in Collioure, and maximum likely left unfinished when Painter returned to Paris in Oct 1914.
The window is unadorned metaphor for vision in nobility Western tradition and World Enmity I. According to Louis Dominion, this painting was “the lid mysterious picture ever painted”. Stretch the painting remained unknown norm the public until the Sixties, it would continue to transfix an entire generation of artists. It is one of illustriousness most surprising paintings by Painter, and although he never in reality recognized it as such, surpass can be said to last the closest to abstraction integrate his oeuvre.
In this portrait of surmount oldest daughter Marguerite, White champion Pink Head, Matisse went be glad about an exciting new direction get ahead of exploring Cubism.
He painted enterprise after returning from Collioure, weather the approach to this canvas was triggered by conversations he’d had with Juan Gris admiration the Cubist works of Sculpturer and Braque. The portrait crack composed of flat and unelaborated forms that create a nonrepresentational version of his daughter.
Weightiness the time, the portrait was met with mixed responses, nevertheless there is no doubt range it is one of tiara greatest portraits that shows deft powerful and original approach tell somebody to Cubism. The strength lies doubtful the fact that he was not trying to copy Painter or Picasso, but that be active kept his own recognizable interest group underneath the Cubist approach.
Matisse moved into wish apartment on 19 Quai Saint-Michel in Paris in 1913.
Presentday, he painted Interior, Goldfish Bowl, one of his most intricate paintings addressing the study prop up space. The goldfish bowl trim the center of the stuff creates an ambiguity in say publicly space: it is both theme of the surroundings while besides a separate world of lecturer own. Included in Matisse’s keep fit of paintings exploring the abstruseness of space, in Interior, Cyprinid Bowl he worked with high-mindedness motif of the window, authority studio, and the view fortify the Seine. The color blue connects all the different elements bear hug the painting, while the conflicting shades of it, lighter promote darker, create perspective.
“I scheme never been so clearly late in the expression of colours.”
Henri Matisse
In 1930, Matisse traveled to Tahiti tell the United States. These voyage brought about a new budge in his paintings. The nudes he painted in this generation were monumental and reduced cause somebody to almost geometric forms.
He was focused on reinterpreting the self-importance between the figure and honourableness background plane. In this interval, he also photographed the ridiculous stages in his works, stake then kept reworking the paintings and simplifying them, often hunk wiping or scraping off colour. It is with this taste that Matisse worked on Seated Pink Nude, a painting a variety of his favorite model Lydia Delectorskaya.
The painting had 13 divergent stages, and the canvas shows the traces of Matisse’s ustment and simplification. The final appear in is a powerful and scarce figure with no face, fair a ghostly blurring and unmixed mirage of the different poses that she had taken jammy the previous stages. The be capable phases of the process control become part of the farewell painting.
During World Clash II, in 1941, Matisse was diagnosed with duodenal cancer.
Pursuing a successful surgery, he misinterpret himself bedridden for nearly trine months. During this time, sand made a large number be defeated drawings and illustrations, and complex a totally new art instruct since the productions of paintings and sculptures had become kin taxing for him – cut-out paper collages or découpages.
In 1943, he published an medium called Drawings.
Themes and Variations, in which he laid vacant his creative method: he would observe his motif and make a series of variations seriousness it, with only slight differences, to get to the group together of it and present inner parts in the most concentrated grip. The most often recurring motifs were female nudes and drawn lifes, and Face of natty Woman (Starry Veil) is betwixt one of his drawing focus.
His drawings also served introduce preparations for his paintings.
Matisse artificial from Nice to the depleted town of Vence in 1943, when Nice came under commination from bombardment during WWII.
Call a halt Vence, he made his last series of paintings and modernize advanced expression of colors, get out as the “Vence interiors”. Say publicly series is a summary remind Matisse’s painting oeuvre. After think about it, he almost exclusively continued creating his cut-outs, or découpages, object paper and gouache – copperplate method he had started functioning with after his surgery unacceptable weakening health.
In this in mint condition context, Matisse continued to review the harmony between color slab line.
From 1948, the artist stanch himself to the decoration see Vence’s Dominican Chapel of dignity Rosary. He worked with stout cut-outs to create the blotched designs for the stained dead even windows on the chapel’s south wall.
The second version pressure the designs Matisse made mention the chapel is one heed the centerpieces of the extravaganza at the Museum of Sheer Arts in Budapest, titled Pale Blue Windows. The brightly blotch motifs are memories of Matisse’s trips to Tahiti and Archipelago in 1930. Matisse did pule only create the stained glassy windows for the chapel however also painted designs of voting ballot (saints and Mary holding primacy baby Jesus) on white tiles on the walls of dignity chapel, creating a fully immersive art piece in the synagogue.
The project was concluded contain 1952, a couple of period before Matisse’s death.
In his cut-out work, Painter first painted sheets of unearthing with gouache, and then section out various shapes and prompt them into new compositions. Achieve your goal this approach, he finally mat he managed to harmonize arrest and color, something he difficult to understand been trying to achieve everywhere his entire career.
In 1937, Painter produced his first cover replica for the art and legendary magazine Verve, a publication through Tériade.
He would continue trial design covers for five nook issues. Verve printed reproductions promote to works by artists including Painter, Picasso, Braque, and Chagall. Support the covers, Matisse worked wholly with his paper cut-outs. Groove order to ensure that integrity colors were as accurate since possible, he designed the duvets in the Tériade office, run through color samples of the be liked pigments for his cut-outs.
Goodness result is a beautiful garnering of cover designs that institute a visual harmony between contents, image, color, and line.
In 1943, Matisse was commissioned wishywashy Tériade to create a periodical of stencils in gouache stake out a “book on color”, carried away by the work he difficult to understand done for the Verve publications.
The idea was to nerve-racking out a technique that would enable the works to give somebody the job of easily reproduced. Matisse found dexterous parallel in jazz music, saying: “Each red remains red, each blue remains blue – like jazz, in which each actor playing as a soloist increases his part of his inventiveness, of his sensitivity.”
The nearing of making color cut-outs later became a practice in betrayal own right – it was revealed to the public constitute the publication of the duly named album Jazz.
In position 1947 edition, Matisse chose tell off alternate color plates and text pages with text written focal point his own handwriting, like practised modern version of a archaic illuminated manuscript. Alongside his maximum famous paintings, Jazz is deprived of a doubt one of magnanimity peaks of Matisse’s oeuvre, radiate which he found the cheap harmony between the lightness comprehend his vibrant colors, the frankness of his cut-out figures spreadsheet motifs, and the simplicity appropriate pared-down forms.
Keep reading on Artland Magazine
Trace Matisse’s artistic development in our initially about his art, life stream legacy
Read our article about significance history of collage in art
Other relevant sources
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