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Museum of Arts and Design To Present Major

Exhibition Of Works By World Renowned French Artist

NEW YORK, April 21, 2021 /Marketwatch/ — From July 10 through to September 4,

2021, the Museum of Arts and Design will present a major exhibition of works by celebrated

French artist Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse, (born December 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, France

—died November 3, 1954, Nice). The second museum exhibition in the U.S. of Henri Matisse’s

drawings displays the most considerable artistic and technical breakthrough in the thousand-year

history of artistic work. The exhibition’s aim is to underline Matisse’s meticulous creative

process; despite notions of him being a spontaneous painter, the artist actually took painstaking

effort in perfecting his paintings, and the exhibition brings this aspect of his work to life. The

display moves in a loose chronological order that highlights Matisse’s early years in Paris, with

influences from the Paul Cezanne and Paul Signac, to his success at Galerie Maeght, and his

final days in Venice. Rather than being impossibly linear, the show tells a story through pairs and

trios of Matisse’s works.

The most fascinating part of the exhibition will be displaying of the pairs and the trios of

Henri Matisse’s paintings. After so many years, parts of his series will come together. The Henri

Matisse’s Le Lux 1 and Le Lux ll will be reunited at the exhibition. Just like pieces of puzzle, the

artwork falls into place to complete an image of the Henri Matisse’s artistic process. Viewers can

examine what the artist altered in the various versions of each motif, what he omitted and added,

and how his compositions become more abstract and colors bolder over time. 
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The picture is called the Le Luxe ll, distemper on canvas, 1907-1908. It measures 209.5 x 138

cm or 82.5 x 54.75 in. Like most of Matisse’s works, it has vivid colors and uses nude dancers.

The picture is currently in the public domain in the US because it was published before 1923.

With its subject matter – three naked women in a landscape – and the title Le Luxe the work

inscribes itself into a long-standing tradition for depicting bathing women in a natural setting.

The theme is a traditional image of untainted happiness in a mythical, paradisiacal Arcadia.

Henri Matisse was among the first artist of his generation to address the theme again, employing

it in a new fashion. He created two versions of this motif on the exact same scale: Le Luxe I

(Centre Pompidou, Paris) painted using oils and loose, dry brushstrokes, and Le Luxe II painted
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using distemper and large, uniformly colored planes. Thus, he tested different modes of

expression for the panting.

The picture on the left is the Yong Sailor l, 1906. Oil on canvas. It measures 39.25 x 32 in. The

one on the right is the Young Sailor ll, 1906. Oil on canvas, 39 7/8 x 32 5/8 in.The picture is in

the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Henri Matisse is regarded as the most creative French painter of the 20th century. His style of

painting mixed bright colors with abstract shapes but stayed within the realm of traditional

subjects such as still life, landscape and portraiture. It was noted that painting did not come

easily for Henri Matisse for he often repainted and reworked his pieces. He was the leader of the

1900, Fauvist Movement. The movement aim was to express thigs beyond the superficial image
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of the object, that is, landscapes or people that were being painted. This was done through

distorting the color and the form of the painted object. Henri Matisse desire to paint was initiated

from his middle class and northern French upbring. One of his greatest triumph was in 1896

when he exhibited his four paintings at the Nationale des Beaux-Arts, France. Henri Matisse’s

colors became, for a while, lighter in hue and at the same time more intense. Later, he was

selected as an associate member of the salon society. Influenced by the works of some of the

greatest sculptures in French, Rodin and Antoine louis Barye, Henri began a sculpture class.

In 1899, Matisse become a familiar figure in the Parisian circle after ceasing to exhibit

his artistic work in Salon. Henri Matisse first exhibited his work in New York, US in 1908.

Fauvism was too undisciplined to last long, and soon some of its members started moving

according to their personalities, toward Expressionism, or Cubism. Matisse had no liking for

these directions. He had, however, too much rationalism in his outlook not to wish for some

order in a stylistic situation that threatened to become chaotic, and his search for

chromatic equilibrium and linear economy can be followed in a series of major works produced

between the revelation of Fauvism in 1905 and the end of World War I. 
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Works Cited

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs. The Museum of Modern Arts, New York. Available at:

https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/downloads/matisse-cut-

outs-artworks.pdf 2014