Matisse @ MoMA

Head: White and Rose

i'm going again SOON, to see this exhibition again! this was a time when matisse was fucking around and figuring some shit out. all these paintings show signs of revision, process and obliteration. some info from MoMA below:

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...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 MoMA website has some good audio from the exhibition too. it's also worth going the exhibition site at Art Institute of Chicago. some highlights below.

Goldfish and Palette

view of Notre Dame

Shaft of Sunlight, the Woods of Trivaux

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bathers

The Moroccans