Matisse. Cahiers d’art, the pivotal 1930's

You might think you know all there is to know about Matisse since so many exhibitions have been devoted to him. However, while these have covered every period of his long career, very few have focused specifically on the 1930s.

Matisse in the 1930s

In 1930, wanting to take a break from his creative work, Matisse decided to leave France for the United States and Tahiti.
The exhibition “Matisse. Cahiers d’Art, le tournant des années 1930” on display at the Musée de l’Orangerie returns to this decade which marked a real turning point, or even a break in his career, explored here through the lens of Cahiers d’Art, a major avant-garde journal created by Christian Zervos in 1926. The journal was the mouthpiece for international modernism and the aesthetic trends of its day, and reported on the artist’s production throughout the inter-war period, characterised by a new synthetic and decorative radicalism that brought him closer to Picasso and the Surrealists. In subsequent issues of the journal, Matisse appears alongside the artists of his time: Georges Braque, Juan Miro, Fernand Léger, Vassily Kandinsky, Mondrian, Le Corbusier and Marcel Duchamp.

A set of paintings rarely seen in France

The exhibition brings together a set of works from this period, some of which are rarely exhibited in France, such as Large Reclining Nude from Baltimore, The Song from Houston and the 1938 Romanian Blouses series which is housed in various American museums. The density and complexity of this decade are suggested by sculptures, objects from the Matisse collection, drawings, engravings and paintings, as well as recent prints of photographs of states of progress, archives, film excerpts and issues of Cahiers d’Art.

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