: Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
The goals of the multiyear conservation effort have been to bring this magical environment back to its original color balance, height, and spatial configuration. Newly conserved, The Swimming Pool—off view for more than 20 years—returns to MoMA’s galleries as a centerpiece of the exhibition. Timed tickets are required for non-members. The exhibition also mines the tensions that lurk in all the cut-outs, between finish and process, fine art and decoration, drawing and color. A brilliant final chapter in Matisse’s long career, the cut-outs reflect both a renewed commitment to form and color and an inventiveness directed to the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these. Join MoMA today. The Swimming Pool is the only cut-out composed for a specific room—the artist’s dining room in his apartment in Nice, France. Matisse would cut painted sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes—from the vegetal to the abstract—which he then arranged into lively compositions, striking for their play with color and contrast, their exploitation of decorative strategies, and their economy of means. Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is a groundbreaking reassessment of this important body of work. In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out. The largest and most extensive presentation of the cut-outs ever mounted, the exhibition includes approximately 100 cut-outs—borrowed from public and private collections around the globe—along with a selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles. More information on visiting the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
MoMA Members and their accompanied guests can enter the exhibition anytime by showing a valid membership card or guest ticket. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and a children’s book.
