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.
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. “The invitation to travel expresses in a particular way the quintessential aesthetic of Matisse,” the exhibition’s curator Raphael Bouvier told AFP, 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. It traces the artist’s footsteps from his beginnings in Paris to Collioure in southwest France, where .