Illinois Museum Exhibits Henri Matisse

In the career of Henri Matisse, the time between his 1913 return from Morocco and his 1917 departure for Nice witnessed the production of the artist's most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic works: paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by the colors black and gray.

Typically works from this period have been considered as unrelated to one another, aberrations within the artist's development, or responses to Cubism or World War I. Matisse and the Methods of Modern Construction will move beyond the surface of paintings from this time to examine their physical production and the essential context of Matisse's studio practice. In shifting focus, the exhibition will reveal deep connections between works and demonstrate the artist's critical development at this time.

Near the end of his life Matisse acknowledged 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." Their importance resides not only in the formal qualities—what Matisse called "the methods of modern construction"—but also in the physical nature of the pictures.

Each bears the history of its manufacture: multiple layers of paint from numerous revisions that Matisse worked especially by scraping and incising to near-sculptural handling. That few related sketches exist for many paintings in this period indicates the artist's search for a new way of working, as does his temporary break in making sculptures. Rather than produce alternate versions of compositions in graphite, ink, clay, or paint, Matisse limited his exploration to a single canvas, which in its heavily reworked and abstracted final state suggests that the act of painting itself became an added subject for him.

The concept of Matisse and the Methods of Modern Construction evolved from a recently initiated investigation of the Art Institute's Bathers by a River that employs new analytical and scientific technologies to uncover the evolutionary history of this painting's creation. Thus far, this groundbreaking research has revealed much about Matisse's methods of production as well as a number of unexpected connections with other works, most significantly, the Museum of Modern Art's paintings The Moroccans and The Piano Lesson (1916).

The Museum of Modern Art has now likewise engaged in an investigation of works in its collection. Through this partnership, new information about Matisse's pigments, experimental techniques, and compositional choices has come to light. These findings hold the promise of a fundamental reassessment of Matisse's experimental working through new, "modern" pictorial means and its impact on the rest of his career. The final form of the exhibition will depend upon this continually developing information.

The exhibition will include approximately 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints primarily 1913 to 1917 in order to consider fully Matisse's meaning of the "modern construction." In doing so, Matisse and the Methods of Modern Construction will be the first sustained examination devoted to the work of this important period. The picture shows Henri Matisse. Bathers by a River, 1909, 1913, 1916. Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection. -- www.artic.edu