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Le Luxe I (1907. Centre Pompidou) and Le Luxe II
(1907 Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhague)
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The Pompidou Centre's new blockbuster exhibition Matisse. Paires et Séries is dedicated to the series of modern art master Henri Matisse. Bringing together 60 paintings and 30 sketches from public and private collections worldwide, the exhibition examines Matisse's use of repetition throughout his career. He obsessively painted the same subject two, three, four or even more times at more or less the same time in his life, retaining the same composition and the same canvas size in order to explore questions of form and style. The artist himself described it as "Like someone who writes a sentence, rewrites it, makes new discoveries." Here the matching paintings are displayed in their pairs or their series spanning the entirety of Matisse's career from his exploration of pointillism in 1899 right up to the collages of the 1950s (with the famous Nu Bleu series of 1952). A room is dedicated to Matisse's series of line drawings and sketches which are drawn with such a spontaneity that they capture movement and the passage of time as if they were film stills. The exhibition is devoid of too much pedagogical direction, with the collection being displayed chronologically and the theme of each series - and the tension and contrast between each set of works - speaking for itself.
Matisse. Paires et Séries.
7th March - 18th June 2012
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou, 75004
Open Weds-Mon, 11am-9pm
I'm going back to Paris on May, so excited to learn about this exhibit!
ReplyDeleteI needed a push to get back to the Pompidou and take advantage of my yearly pass which has gone unused most of the year - and this might be the thing to get me back there!
ReplyDeleteHi Taide - thanks for the comment. Hope you enjoy it!
ReplyDeleteForest - I think this exhibition would be the perfect excuse to go back! It's a nice, compact exhibition that's not too academically heavy-handed - the pictures are really left to do the talking - which makes a change from some of the often quite scholarly exhibitions that are put on at the Pompidou. I really enjoyed it - let me know what you think!
-KLA x