Matisse in the 1930s

Curators and historians examine Henri Matisse’s work at the end of the 1920s and through the 1930s in this companion to a travelling exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, and the Musée Matisse in Nice. As the 1930s began, Matisse felt he was at a creative impasse and that his artistic career might be ending. But upon his return from a trip to New York and Tahiti in 1930 and with the commission of a mural (The Dance) for Albert Barnes’s foundation in Merion, PA, Matisse’s work would become revitalized. His place as a leading artist in the world of modern art also was confirmed in 1930–33 with four major retrospective exhibitions of his work in Berlin, Basel, Paris, and New York, at the Museum of Modern Art. Also, the major Parisian art periodical, the Cahiers d’art, was to feature numerous reproductions of and articles about Matisse’s art during the 1930s. While this book’s content is scholarly, the writing is accessible, and many color reproductions and includes catalogue entries on specific artworks, along with a chronology of photographs of the artist at work from 1926 to 1940.