Matisse, the 1930's

With the support of the "Cahiers d'Art" review, exhibition at the Matisse Museum until September 24th 2023, daily open except Tuesdays (10am - 6pm), phone : 04.93.81.08.08

The Matisse work is built on several steps showing the will not to be classify inside the same art style from the famous odalisques to the interiors of Nice. During each step Matisse thinks to the other. "Matisse the 1930's" gives a huge part to the "Cahiers d'Art" avant - garde review where he has collaborated translating his interest for universalism and non western arts. In 1925 Henri Matisse felt the first symptoms of an artistic crisis because he can't find inspiration anymore. The commercial recognition gives him the reputation of a bourgeois painter and Matisse wants to break this image. He decides to work with the chief editor of the "Cahiers d'Art" names Christian Zervos and also to leave Europe for travelling to the United States. During 1930 Matisse arrives by boat in New - York and takes the train for moving to Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco discovering a country he doesn't know. He uses others mediums like cameras, drawings, letters and postcards for recording colors, emotions and forms. The trip ends in Tahiti where Matisse meets the film director Murnau on a set. He stands back and decides to make some drawings each days like sketchs or more sophisticated including performative style as automatism precursor.

Matisse keeps up a correspondence with Alexander Ramm an art critic since July 1934 developing his own reflections about architectural dimension of painting saying that limits aren't the end. This applying can be find in the "Pink Nude Seated" (1935) and "Reclining Nude and Nymph and Faun (La Verdure)" (1935). Matisse takes also a camera for shooting each steps of a canvas like he has already done with "La danse". It helps him to catch in memory the work growing and also for printing them in the "Cahiers d'Art" review for the audience. Matisse interests him also by illustration books like the Mallarmé "Poésies" and the Joyce "Ulysse" but stays desappointed by the Mallarmé "Poésies" publication. During the 1930's Matisse moves back to the roots of his art and invents a new moving and  lightning but his situation changes just before the end of that time. Martisse participates to the Romain Rolland anti - fascist meeting at the Alhambra Theater in July 1936, signes alsongside Picasso a telegram in favour of freedom in Spain and watches with attention the Picasso "Guernica" (1937). At the same time he hires Lydia as workshop assistant and rents an apartment at the Regina hotel who will become his new studio.

https://artspresse.over-blog.com/2021/06/pierre-matisss-an-art-dealer-in-new-york.html

http://artetcinemas.over-bog.com/2023/03/caravage-6.html

https://artetcinemas.over-blog.com/2023/08/20-years.html

Comments

[Richard Murray]

do you have a favorite matisse?

[Philippe]

Making a choice among the canvas made by Matisse is something difficult. But for giving an answer I will say the coast near Cavalaire for the colors, the odalisques for the erotism and "the pool" because he understands well swimming an can translate it on a canvas.