From July 18 to October 11, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA) will be presenting Matisse: radical invention, 1913-1917. The exhibition, organized by The Art Institute of Chicago, offers a rare opportunity for witnessing how changes in Matisse’s work actually occurred during that period―how the artist changed his view on reality, on the reality of its own work, and how he built a ground for change, a ground for a new paradigm.
From the Museum of Modern Art in New York City’s website:
In the time between Henri Matisse’s (1869-1954) return from Morocco in 1913 and his departure for Nice in 1917, the artist produced some of the most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic works of his career—paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by shades of black and gray. Works from this period have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as an aberration within the artist’s development, or as a response to Cubism or World War I. Matisse: radical invention, 1913-1917 moves beyond the surface of these paintings to examine their physical production and the essential context of Matisse’s studio practice. Through this shift of focus, the exhibition reveals deep connections among these works and demonstrates their critical role in the artist’s development at this time. Matisse himself acknowledged near the end of his life the significance of this period when he identified two works—Bathers by a river (1909-10, 1913, 1916-17) and The Moroccans (1915-16)—as among his most “pivotal.” The importance of this moment resides not only in the formal qualities of the paintings but also in the physical nature of the pictures, each bearing the history of its manufacture. The exhibition includes approximately 120 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, primarily from the years of 1913-17, in the first sustained examination devoted to the work of this important period.
Composition n. II (1909), © The State Museum of Fine Arts Moscow
The evolution of Bathers by a river can be traced in the X-radiograph of the painting. Matisse began the canvas in March 1909, and as he worked on it through 1910, he modified his initially idyllic scene of four figures resting in a landscape, rendering them in bright colors and with tenser figural forms. In May 1913, the artist returned to the canvas, and by November of that year, he had transformed the Arcadian image into a Cubist-inspired scene described in a monochromatic palette. Three years later, he reinvented the scene again, segmenting the composition into large bands of color that reinforce the contours and geometric forms of the figures. He would work on the canvas again the following year, refining his last painting campaign and making subtle changes that reflected a new interest in a softer kind of light.
Bathers by a river, Issy-les-Moulineaux, March-May 1909, fall 1909-spring 1910, May-November 1913, early spring-November 1916, January-October (?) 1917. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1953.158
