Matisse dans tous ses états à Lyon

                                       Matisse in all its states in Lyon                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon devotes an unpublished retrospective to Henri Matisse. An original dialogue between his drawings, his painting and his sculpture                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           How can one find one's place among the many retrospectives already devoted to Henri Matisse? The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon is a magnificent addition to the challenge, with an exhibition unprecedented both by the subject and by the quantity of works shown to the public for the first time. Entitled Le Laboratoire Indépendant, in reference to Baudelaire, the exhibition focuses on the creative process of the painter and, for this purpose, interacts with the black and white of the artist's drawings, realized throughout his life in pencil, Charcoal, pen, ink or brush, with the brilliant colors of his painting and the curves of his sculpture. Some 250 works gathered until March 6, among which numerous drawings and notebooks unpublished, loaned by the family of the artist. His first works, inspired by his masters and the elders, include Cézanne, Manet, Renoir, Rodin, Michelangelo, and then the evolution of his art to the chapel of the Rosary of Vence. A lifetime.

Black and white, bronze and colors interact in all her favorite themes, dance, still lifes with fabrics, sittings with the Italian Laurette, the Frenchwomen Antoinette and Henriette, the Russian Lydia. The famous odalisques are also part of the ensemble, works realized in the jewel of his apartment in Nice, like the explosions of colors of the Vence era. Less well known and more moving, the portraits, in the form of a mask, of his grandchildren Claude and Jackie.

Matisse's attachment to the city of Lyon

To set up this abundant exhibition, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon has borrowed from major European museums, as well as from New York, Philadelphia and Boston. In France, the Center Pompidou has entrusted thirty of its treasures, thus inscribing the Lyon exhibition in the celebrations of its fortieth anniversary. Then, besides the loan of drawings of the personal collection of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren Matisse, there is also the Lyonnais fonds, a sublime series of six portraits of women seated drawn with pen and pencil and Offered personally to the city by the artist. Matisse had a particular attachment to Lyons. In 1941, the Niçois, suffering from cancer, is transported to Lyon for a last chance operation at the Park clinic. Saved by Professors Wertheimer and Leriche, he continued his convalescence at the Grand Nouvel Hotel. A resurrection that allows him to engage in a series of interviews with the art critic Pierre Courthion and to embark on his large series of drawings Themes and variations. During this Lyons period that stretches over several months, he also binds with the director of the Museum of Fine Arts René Jullian, who buys him the portrait L'Antiquaire, completed a few years later by Young Woman in white, red background .

It took more than two years for the museum to set up the Laboratoire Internationale, the most expensive exhibition in ten years in Lyon. "I saw in 2012 the Picasso black and White exhibition presented by the Guggenheim Museum in New York and I had kept the idea of doing the same with Matisse," explains Sylvie Ramond, director of the Museum of Fine Arts from Lyon. "Then I realized the extreme importance of color for Matisse and I chose to make dialog between drawings and painting. The one who takes Matisse in her personal Pantheon admits "having turned around for a long time around the artist before finding an approach that renews the knowledge we have of Matisse. Exercise is more than successful.