Great artists are sometimes able to experience a moment when the muse touches them and they’re able to create work of such startling innovation that the roots of their inspiration remain a mystery even to them.
“Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917,” seeks to explore Henri Matisse’s moment, a pivotal five-year period in which the artist produced what may have been the most creative and experimental art of his celebrated career.
The new show covers the years between Matisse’s return from Morocco to Paris in 1913 to his departure to Nice in 1917. The show features nearly 110 of Matisse’s works, including paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. According to the biography “The Unknown Matisse,” by Hilary Spurling, the artist often compared his development to that of a seed. “It’s like a plant that takes off once it is firmly rooted,” he said.
During the years covered by the show, Matisse was a man in motion, moving from one city to another, one model to the next, veering from almost undiluted abstraction to a sensual naturalism. He repeatedly reworked his canvases to find fresh ways to give form to his evolving ideas. He was inspired and challenged by the world around him–the Cubism championed by Picasso, the Moorish architecture from his travels in Spain and Morocco, even the Notre Dame Cathedral visible from his studio window in Paris.
According to the book “Matisse and Picasso: The Story Of Their Rivalry And Friendship,” by Jack Flam, Matisse once said “One can’t live in a house too well kept. One has to go off into the jungle to find simpler ways which won’t stifle the spirit.”
Matisse was searching for something deeper than what could be seen on the surface. In Spurling’s book “Matisse the Master,” she quotes the artist as saying of photography that “Its real service was in showing that the artist was concerned with something other than external appearance.”
Here’s a slideshow of some of the work featured in the new show, which begins on July 18 and is on display through October 11.
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