Matisse: Invitation To The Voyage

Exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 22 September 2024 - 26 January 2025

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is one of the most famous artists of modernism. His innovative work had a considerable influence on his contemporaries and many later artists, right up to the present day. Throughout his life, he experimented with different media and pursued his artistic development, notably during his many trips to the Mediterranean region, North Africa, Russia, the United States and Tahiti.

This exhibition catalogue covers all the artist's creative periods. Beginning with paintings from around 1900, it moves on to the revolutionary Fauvist paintings, the experimental works of the 1910s, the sensual paintings of the Nice period and the 1930s, and culminates in the legendary cut-outs of the artist's last period. Inspired by Charles Baudelaire's 1857 poem Invitation au voyage, the book is conceived as a journey through Matisse's work and life.