Henri Matisse’s (1869–1954) final years were full of turmoil. Following a separation from his wife and the outbreak of World War II, the French artist was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, which caused him to be bedridden for months at a time. And yet, Matisse never surrendered his art to the distressing circumstances at hand.
When given the opportunity to flee from France to Brazil amid the Nazi invasion, Matisse ultimately refused to abandon his studio in Nice. When surgery to treat his cancer left him too weak to paint on canvases, he directed his assistants as they blended pigments by his bedside and ‘painted’ with paper-cut outs instead. All the while, Matisse continued to lead the Fauvism movement with his use of striking colours in his still lifes and portraits of female figures that depicted a world far more vibrant than the one around him.
Needless to say, Matisse is regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th century and a handful of his works are often found at exhibitions in Tokyo every year. This upcoming showcase at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, however, is a particularly momentous event as it is the first large-scale Matisse retrospective Japan has seen in almost 20 years.
The majority of the works are borrowed from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which boasts one of the world’s biggest Matisse collections. The roughly 150 works on display range from early oil paintings to sculptures and cut-outs that defined the artist’s self-proclaimed ‘second life’.
From the 1904 painting ‘Luxe, Calm et Volupté’, which is recognised as Matisse’s official foray into Fauvism, to the drafts used to build The Rosary Chapel, his final masterpiece, this showcase is an exhilarating celebration of the artist's extraordinary spirit and passion for colour.