What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.
Henri Matisse
A journey through masterpieces and the places that inspired them, among the bright Mediterranean atmospheres, geographical and soul points, backgrounds of artistic events and fundamental to the evolution of modern European art. The new exhibition project designed for the Candiani Cultural Center, which stems from the civic collections of modern art preserved at Ca’ Pesaro, enriched by prestigious international loans, is dedicated to another master of the 20th-century avant-garde: Henri Matisse (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 1869 – Nice, 1954). Master and progenitor of the Fauves – the beasts, the savages – and therefore placed in the exhibition and in dialogue with artists with whom he shared biographical events and artistic revolutions; painter of the joy of life, of deep emotions, translated into strong, vivid, unnatural colors. And, above all, an interpreter of light: the center of Matisse’s research, as of those artists who aimed to capture the dazzling beauty of the Mediterranean Sea, of the Midi, the French Midi, the physical place and of artistic creation, the true protagonist of color liberated from wild Expressionism.
Light and color are thus the focus of the exhibition, along with the importance, almost an obsession, of drawing for Matisse. More than fifty works are on display, starting with the valuable graphic collections of the International Gallery of Modern Art-which include three important lithographs by the French artist dating from the 1920s and two drawings belonging to his 1947 production-placed alongside the master’s masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art the Národní Galerie in Prague, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Musée Albert-André in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, and the Museo del Novecento in Milan. Seven sections to investigate Modernity Comes from the Sea, The Light of the Mediterranean, The Golden Age, The Mediterranean, a Unique Paradise, joined by reflections on the decorative and ornamentation, the allure of Moorish lines, the languid female figures as odalisques in Arabesco and Decoration up to the perfect synthesis of Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness and the “design of pleasure,” about which the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy writes. Subscribe to our whatsapp channel!
Thus spontaneously arose a dialogue with several authors who worked on the inner qualities of painting, pursuing poetics: Henri Manguin, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, and Pierre Bonnard. Distinct researches and productions, however, create a choral narrative: from the friendship between Derain and Matisse, on a trip to the Mediterranean coast of France in the summer of 1905, to the centrality of certain places, such as Nice, Arles, and Saint-Tropez, the latter of which has become an icon of 20th-century art and culture. The exhibition closes with Matisse’s last revolutionary creative phase. From Color to Form begins with the production of papiers découpés, sheets of colored paper cut out and pasted in which the French master brings the synthesis of expression to its maximum. From the epigones of the Venetian area, such as Renato Borsato or Saverio Barbaro, to the figurines of Chris Ofili and up to the compositions of Marinella Senatore, the dignity of the decorative, ornament, drawing and stylization of the figure emerges in the last section of the exhibition as perhaps Matisse’s most important bequest to the contemporary age.
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