A Celebration of Henri Matisse

This comprehensive exhibition on the career of the great French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954) showcases over 170 works of art spanning 50 years of Matisse’s career, with particular emphasis placed on the role that printmaking played in the development of the artist’s career. The exhibition offers compelling evidence of the important role printmaking played in the evolution of Matisse’s visual ideas. The exhibition loosely follows the chronology of Matisse’s career, from the artist’s earliest print in 1900 to the last in 1951. Examples of every printmaking technique used by Matisse — etchings, monotypes, lithographs, linocuts, aquatints, drypoints, woodcuts and color prints — are included. Almost all of the prints involve serial imagery, with the artist showing the development of a reclining or seated pose, the integration of models within interiors, the study of facial expressions, and the transformation of a subject from a straight representation to something more abstract or developed.

The exhibition brings together works from the collection of the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, with artworks bequeathed by Henri Matisse to his younger son Pierre (1900–1989) and a selection of works from the Baltimore Museum of Art’s world-renowned Cone Collection, formed by Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone. Many of the later prints in the exhibition are from a recent gift to the Baltimore Museum of Art from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation and will be shown for the first time in this exhibition. The majority of these works are rarely on view to the public due to their sensitivity to light. 

Image:

This exhibition has been made possible in Tampa by Bank of America

Additional support has been provided Dex Imaging and the Florida Communications Group