Matisse, Cahiers D'art Le Tournant Des Années 1930

Exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 1 March - 29 May 2023;
Musée Matisse, Nice, 23 June - 24 September 2023.

In 1930, Matisse left France for a trip to Tahiti. The artist thus voluntarily marked a pause in his creation and initiated a turning point in his work.

Although he was not in the limelight during the 1920s, the painter's work came back to the forefront of the debates and reflections of the time, through regular publications in Cahiers d'Art, the avant-garde journal created by Christian Zervos in 1926, which shed light on his pre-1916 painting and gave an account of his current production. Articles and reproductions of Matisse's works helped to rekindle the competition with Picasso.

This exhibition catalogue looks back at this decisive decade in Matisse's career. Through the prism of Cahiers d'Art, it looks at the artist's work in the 1930s. Bringing together a collection of works from this period, the book proposes to identify the major issues at stake.

Several exceptional works, very rarely exhibited in France, are brought together for this exhibition, notably The Great Reclining Nude of Baltimore, The Song of Houston and the 1938 series of Romanian Blouses, which are held in various American museums. The density and complexity of this decade are suggested by sculptures, objects from Matisse's collection, drawings, engravings and paintings, as well as recent photographic prints, archives, film fragments and issues of Cahiers d'Art.