Opening on July 1, 2011, at 6 PM at the Matisse Museum, 164 Avenue des Arènes de Cimiez
Exhibition from July 2 to October 2, 2011.
The exhibition Henri Matisse: The Dissolution of Line and Color is organized around the donation by Mr. and Mrs. Claude Duthuit of the ceramic piece The Swimming Pool by Henri Matisse, which represents a remarkable enrichment for the Nice collections of the Matisse Museum.
This exhibition explores, on one hand, the representation of water in the painter’s work and addresses the reasons why Matisse perceives the sea, water, and sky as horizons of endless light and creation.
On the other hand, it focuses on the unique character of his art in creating a line that approaches a form of dissolution of the stroke in the graphic space. Similarly, the painting can achieve, through the arrangement of planes and colors, a fluidity of the pictorial space.
In the history of art as in Matisse’s work, the theme of water bears several interpretations, particularly poetic ones. The fluid character of the line, its dissolution on the white of the paper, can take on symbolic dimensions in Matisse’s work, like the features of a gaze or the expression given to the reverie of sleeping figures.
