Matisse: A Second Life at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris

In 1941 Matisse had an abdominal cancer surgery which had a devastating effect on his health and ability to paint. He was unable to stand upright in front of an easel. The artist therefore turned to another form of artistic expression. He created paper cut-outs in the same vivid, strong colors and daring compositions known from his paintings. He had an assistant and could work lying in bed or sitting comfortably in an arm-chair.

For Matisse, his rescue from death and recovery from surgery gave him a sense of rebirth which would influence his work during the following 13 years. Some 80 paintings from this little explored phase of the painter’s repertoire will be showcased until the 17th of July 2005.

It shows him drawing incessantly, painting sporadically, rediscovering the medium of paper cutouts and preparing what he would consider his masterpiece, the paintings and stained-glass windows of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, near Nice.

The link running through this exhibition and this period of his life, which was to surface in his correspondence with close friend André Rouveyre, was the need to rediscover everything anew in a positive light.

According to Danish curator, Hanne Finsen, this is the first time that Matisse's late years have been examined in France. She explains that she has long been fascinated by how, once great artists reach an advanced age, they often forget commercial considerations and display "extraordinary freedom." This is what is shown in "Matisse: A Second Life," which travels to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark this summer.

"The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction." – Henri Matisse


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