"I have attained a form filtered to its essentials" - Henri Matisse.
The second trip to Paris of the year so far, yielded what might very well qualify as the exhibition of the year. Matisse 1941-1954 examines the prolific later years of the artist's output when, despite failing health and having undergone a near-fatal operation for intestinal cancer in 1941 that left him physically weakened, his work underwent a dramatic reinvention or "blossoming" as he described it. Matisse had left Paris, relocating to the south of France, and as well as painting, adopted a radical new language in his practice cutting into gouache-painted papers to accommodate his serious health issues and confinement to a wheelchair. He found a new visual vocabulary by taking up the scissors, creating a wonderful series of colourful collages elevating the status of the technique in the process. This exhibition was created by the team at Centre Pompidou but is presented in the vast space of the Grand Palais. It is presented chronologically, starting small with Matisse having moved to an apartment at the Régina hotel in Nice. We see some still life paintings from the period and a series of paintings of posed models as well as a rediscovered love of drawing in which Matisse obsessively draws the same motifs- reclining women, vases of flowers, faces repetitively. Each time he is refining the line and composition, paring everything down to the barest essentials. In 1944 he was asked to make a book about colour, the next series of works encountered in the exhibition are the Jazz collages for this book project which stand out like vivid shimmering shards of colour in the darkened gallery space. It was such a treat to see these original collages as well as the published versions. the strong, graphic shapes and punchy colour combinations unite to create something particularly special that does indeed evoke the liveliness of jazz music. After a series of air raids on Nice, Matisse decamped to the hills of Vence further inland in 1943 where he stayed until 1948. Here the paper cut-outs became larger in scale occupying whole walls of his bedroom from floor to ceiling, as he grew bolder and more ambitious with the technique. New paintings and drawings were also created, simplified forms in vibrant colours and in stark contrast, a series of bold black and white drawings which occupy the next galleries in the exhibition. During this period Matisse was invited to create designs for a chapel in Vence and threw everything into this project designing the priests' vestments, stained glass window panels, furniture and decorated ceramic tiles. The Chapelle Du Rosaire was completed and consecrated in 1951 with Matisse declaring - "this work has taken me four years of exclusive and diligent work, and it is the result of my entire working life. Despite all its imperfections I consider it to be my masterpiece." Designs for this project fill the next galleries in the exhibition and do inspire a quiet sense of reverence and spirituality in the visitor. It is plain to see why the artist considered his work on the chapel to be his magnum opus. These works lead on into the next section of the exhibition which feature more monumentally scaled collages such as the Tate's L’Escargot, and Acanthes (Acanthus), before we are lead into another darkened, circular space full of large simplified, gestural portrait drawings where Matisse reduces elements down even further with one portrait consisting of just seven brushstrokes. The exhibition concludes on a high with even more of the huge paper-cut collages - La Tristesse du Roi (The Sorrow of the King), Zulma, Danseuse Créole (Creole Dancer) and the Nus Bleus (Blue Nudes), truly an embarrassment of riches. These collages are a master class in colour, form and line, a glorious end-of career reinvention and joyous late flourishing, created on an immersive scale redefining the parameters of art. There are significant loans from private collections, as well as national and international institutions bringing together 300 pieces including major ensembles from the artists' prolific late period. There have been some very similar shows to this in the past which look at this late period in Matisse's life or his collages in particular (here), but none have gone into this depth, or put together elements of the whole gamut of his entire oeuvre - paintings, drawings, prints, textile designs, stained glass, graphic design and original collages from the period on such a scale as this. It is a magnificent blockbuster exhibition, full of hits (paintings as well as collages), and is almost overwhelming in scale, but an absolute joy and privilege to have witnessed.
