The Matisse Museum in Nice joins in the celebration of the fifty years of the Marguerite and Aimé Maeght Foundation and presents letters exchanged between Henri Matisse and Aimé Maeght, highlighting the friendship and understanding between the artist and the art enthusiast.
As a reference center for the study of Matisse’s art, the museum wishes to unveil this correspondence between the painter and Aimé Maeght through the selection of over seventy letters, to demonstrate the exchanges that led to the creation of exhibitions and publications contributing to the understanding and dissemination of Matisse’s work.
The selective presentation of this correspondence is accompanied by the painter’s works (drawings, paintings, lithographs, prints), books and various publications edited by Aimé Maeght, photographs and archive documents on the Matisse exhibitions organized by the Maeght gallery and then the Foundation, as well as the screening of videos related to the exhibition.
After a first meeting in Vence in 1943 through Pierre Bonnard, a lasting friendship was established between the artist and the Maeght couple. In 1944, Henri Matisse created several portraits of Marguerite Maeght. Aimé Maeght inaugurated his Parisian gallery at 13 Rue de Téhéran with the exhibition Henri Matisse – Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, which took place from December 7 to 29, 1945. A lithograph by Matisse depicting a young woman holding a sheet with the inscription “I like this drawing” served as the cover, poster, and invitation card.
Later, Matisse and Maeght collaborated on publication projects, such as the Pierre à Feu collection notebooks, a title initiated by Jacques Kober, and the magazine Derrière le miroir, dedicated to artists exhibited at the Maeght gallery, with the first issue Le noir est une couleur published in 1946, illustrated by the painter.
In 1946, on a suggestion from Jean Cassarini, the future secretary of the Mediterranean Union for Modern Art, who had met Matisse through Aimé Maeght, the gallery Maeght’s exhibition was presented in Nice, at the Palais de la Méditerranée, from February 19 to March 10, under the title Henri Matisse.
Using the same cover as the Parisian pamphlet, this first Matisse exhibition in Nice showcased thirty-four works, as well as photographs tracing the stages of progression of some of them, following the simple approach through which the Master wanted the public to engage with his work.
