A new Henri Matisse retrospective in Switzerland offers visitors a rare chance to follow his artistic journey via works from throughout the career of one of modern art’s godfathers.
The Fondation Beyeler museum on the outskirts of Basel has brought together 72 works by the French artist, who died in 1954 aged 84.
They include paintings, sculptures and cut-out paper collages from major international museums and private collections, some of which have not been seen in Europe for more than three decades.
Photo: AFP
The exhibition is the first Matisse retrospective in Switzerland and the German-speaking world in almost 20 years.
OPEN INVITATION
The “Matisse — Invitation to the Voyage” exhibition is named after Charles Baudelaire’s poem, from which the artist took the phrase “Luxe, Calme et Volupte” for the title of his pivotal 1904 oil painting.
Photo: AFP
“The invitation to travel expresses in a particular way the quintessential aesthetic of Matisse,” said the exhibition’s curator Raphael Bouvier, noting that the painter referred to Baudelaire’s poem “several times in his artistic work.”
Travel is an “essential subject” in his life, with Matisse having worked and drawn inspiration in the south of France, Tangiers, New York and Tahiti.
“The exhibition as a retrospective is really conceived as an invitation to voyage into the work of Henri Matisse,” Bouvier said.
Photo: AFP
It traces the artist’s footsteps from his beginnings in Paris to Collioure in southwest France, where he began to revolutionize art in his Fauvism period “by liberating color,” Bouvier said.
It continues up to his late period, inspired by memories of his trip to the South Pacific.
BLUE NUDES
Towards the end of his life, after undergoing abdominal surgery for cancer, Matisse turned to paper cut-out collages, with the birds and seaweed inspired by the fauna and flora he observed during his trip to Tahiti in 1930.
Matisse occupied a special place in the collection of Ernst Beyeler, the Basel art dealer and collector behind the museum.
A bookseller in his early days, Beyeler launched himself into the art market by selling Japanese prints in his shop before transforming it into a gallery in the early 1950s, where Pablo Picasso and Matisse featured prominently.
Beyeler, who died in 2010 aged 88, particularly liked Matisse’s late works because he saw a “great artistic revolution” in paper cut-outs, said Samuel Keller, the foundation’s director.
The exhibition notably covers his iconic Blue Nudes” cut-out series.
‘COMPLETE PICTURE’
Though Matisse exhibitions regularly cover certain aspects of his work, retrospectives of his entire career are “more rare,” Keller said.
In 2020, the Centre Pompidou in Paris dedicated a major exhibition to the artist, but it was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns, meaning relatively few people saw it.
“With major artists like Matisse or Picasso, we could put together many different exhibitions because there are so many aspects to their work,” for example focusing on the 1930s, or the paper cut-outs, Keller said.
“But in each generation, it is important that the public has the chance to see a retrospective, to have a complete picture of the development from young artist to old master.”
The exhibition runs until Jan. 25.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS