Matisse: The Red Studio

In 2022, The Museum of Modern Art and the Statens Museum for Kunst will present an ambitious dossier exhibition focusing on Henri Matisse's Red Studio from 1911. The large painting depicts the artist's work environment in Issy-les-Moulineaux, crowded with his own canvases, sculptures, furniture and decorative objects. Matisse's radical decision to saturate the work's surface with red has continued to fascinate generations of scholars and artists. Yet much remains to be explored in terms of the painting's genesis and history. This show presents a unique opportunity to assess Matisse's painting anew. The first gallery of the exhibition will reunite The Red Studio - in MoMA's collection since 1949 - with the works depicted in it (three of them belong to the Statens Museum for Kunst). Ranging from 1898 to 1911, they span the artist's career up to that date and combine both familiar and lesser-known pieces. The second gallery of the exhibition will retrace the painting's complex history, from the artist's studio in the Parisian suburb to its subsequent international travels and reception. We will explore, for example, how The Red Studio was originally conceived for the Muscovite collector Sergei Shchukin; how it was later included in the famous 1913 Armory Show; how it was on display for fifteen years on the walls of a London social club; and its eventual acquisition by MoMA. A rich selection of archival materials such as photographs, catalogues, letters, and press clippings will join artworks by Matisse and others on display.

“We see how, in an incredibly condensed period of time, an artist can traverse universes and touch down in places unexpected. We witness an artist not only inventing and reinventing himself but reinventing art history as he does so. In these little spaces, you can almost hear these mighty engines roar.”

A tale that's no less fascinating than the painting itself--Howard Halle "ARTnews"
Looking Anew at a Strange Matisse Masterpiece... In 1911 Matisse created "The Red Studio," a self-enclosed world in his studio, by showing 11 earlier works of art, without the presence of the artist.--David Carrier "Hyperallergic"
The optical-sensuous equivalent of a five-alarm fire.--Sebastian Smee "Washington Post"
The Red Studio has the effect of making Matisse's world less abstract...Allows us to enter not only the artist's studio but also the life and mind of the artist--Daniel Ross Goodman "Washington Examiner"
Aesthetic bliss saturates--radically, to a degree still apt to startle when you pause to reflect on it--the means, ends, and very soul of a style that was so far ahead of its time that its full influence took decades to kick in.--Peter Schjeldahl "New Yorker"
A meticulous examination of the inner and outer life of a single painting.--Roberta Smith "New York Times: Arts"
--Jerry Saltz "New York Magazine: Vulture"

Ann Temkin is The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA

Dorthe Aagesen is Chief Curator and Senior Researcher at Statens Museums for Kunst

The adventures, mysteries and many lives of a Matisse masterpiece Created in 1911, Henri Matisse's The Red Studio would go on to become one of the most influential works in the history of modern art. The painting, which has hung in MoMA's galleries since 1949, depicts the artist's studio in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, filled with his own artworks, furniture and decorative objects. Matisse's radical decision to saturate the work's surface with red has fascinated generations of scholars and artists, yet much remained to be discovered about the painting's genesis and history. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that reunites the artworks shown in The Red Studio for the first time since they left Matisse's work space, this copiously illustrated catalog examines the paintings and sculptures depicted in it, from familiar works such as Young Sailor II (1906) to lesser-known pieces whose locations have only recently been discovered. A narrative essay by Ann Temkin, the Marie-Jos

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