The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures and cut-out paper collages from major international museums and private collections

A new retrospective of Henri Matisse in Switzerland offers visitors a rare opportunity to follow his artistic journey through works spanning the career of one of the godfathers of modern art.

The Fondation Beyeler museum on the outskirts of Basel has brought together 72 works by the French artist, who died in 1954 at the age of 84.

These include paintings, sculptures and cut-out paper collages from major international museums and private collections, some of which have not been on display in Europe for more than thirty years.

Photo: AFP

The exhibition is the first Matisse retrospective in Switzerland and the German-speaking world in almost twenty years.

OPEN INVITATION

The exhibition “Matisse – Invitation to the Journey” is named after the poem by Charles Baudelaire, from which the artist borrowed the phrase “Luxe, Calme et Volupte” as the title of his crucial 1904 oil painting.

Photo: AFP

“The invitation to travel expresses in a special way the typical aesthetic of Matisse,” said exhibition curator Raphael Bouvier, noting that the painter “referred to Baudelaire’s poem several times in his artistic work.”

Travel is an ‘essential subject’ in his life, with Matisse having worked and found inspiration in the South of France, Tangier, New York and Tahiti.

“The exhibition as a retrospective is actually conceived as an invitation to take a journey through the work of Henri Matisse,” said Bouvier.

Photo: AFP

It follows the artist’s footsteps from his beginnings in Paris to Collioure in southwestern France, where in his Fauvist period he began to revolutionize art “by liberating color,” Bouvier said.

It continues into his late period, inspired by memories of his voyage to the South Pacific.

BLUE NUDES

Towards the end of his life, after undergoing abdominal surgery for cancer, Matisse turned to cut-out collages, with the birds and seaweed inspired by the fauna and flora he observed during his 1930 trip to Tahiti.

Matisse occupied a special place in the collection of Ernst Beyeler, the Basel art dealer and collector behind the museum.

A bookseller in his early years, Beyeler launched himself into the art market by selling Japanese prints in his shop before converting it into a gallery in the early 1950s, where Pablo Picasso and Matisse played prominent roles.

Beyeler, who died in 2010 at the age of 88, especially loved Matisse’s late works because he saw a “great artistic revolution” in the paper cuttings, said Samuel Keller, director of the foundation.

The exhibition specifically includes his iconic cut-out series Blue Nudes.

‘COMPLETE PICTURE’

While Matisse exhibitions regularly cover certain aspects of his work, retrospectives of his entire career are “rarer,” Keller said.

In 2020, the Center Pompidou in Paris dedicated a major exhibition to the artist, but it was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns, meaning relatively few people saw the exhibition.

“With great artists like Matisse or Picasso, we could put together many different exhibitions because there are so many aspects to their work,” for example focusing on the 1930s or the paper cuttings, Keller said.

“But in every generation it is important that the public has the opportunity to see a retrospective, to get a complete picture of the development from young artist to old master.”

The exhibition runs until January 25.