Henri Matisse, a bold and influential artist, in a major exhibition at CaixaForum

BarcelonaDuring one of his stays in Colliure, Henri Matisse painted a small-format landscape, La Moulade. With the characteristic colorist fury of Fauvism, the painting is made up of a series of vivid color patches: red, green, blue, yellow. The lines are entirely secondary. La Moulade measures only 28.6 x 35.7 centimeters, but for another Fauvist, André Derain, this painting is like "dynamite." This is recalled by Aurélie Verdier, chief curator of the Modern Collections of the National Museum of Modern Art - Centre Pompidou and also curator of the exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona Chez Matisse. The Legacy of a New Painting, which opens its doors this Friday.

The exhibition, the result of the alliance between the La Caixa Foundation and the Centre Georges Pompidou, includes 94 works, 45 of which span Matisse's entire career. La Moulade is an important new addition compared to the exhibition seen at CaixaForum Madrid. The remaining works are by other great artists of his time and later, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Daniel Buren, Robert Delaunay, André Derain, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Frantisek Kupka, Le Corbusier, Jacques Lipchitz, Albert Marquet, Barnett Newman, Emil Nolde, Picasso, Kees van Dongen, and Maurice de Vlaminck. "His master, the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, told Matisse, when he was a young artist in the 1890s, that he would simplify painting – the curator explains –. Indeed, he did and went further: he revolutionized it. He was a masterful colorist who invented forms that are still relevant today."

Matisse is considered the painter of "joy," which does not exclude him having a "critical restlessness," she states. "More than any other artist, Matisse embodied the idea of research, of a work carried out patiently, against all odds," Verdier concludes. Another star of the exhibition is Luxe, Calme et Volupté (1904), which is in Barcelona thanks to the Centre Georges Pompidou being closed for renovations. It is a Pointillist icon, but, at the same time, it reveals Matisse's internal struggles, as he wanted to overcome the division between line and color to "draw with color," as the curator says.

The exhibition, which will be open until August 16, can be considered a small classic retrospective of Matisse and, at the same time, a committed and current look. The presence of artists Sonia Delaunay, Natàlia Gontxarova, Françoise Gilot, Baya (Fatma Haddad), Eva Bergman, and Zoulikha Bouabdellah reflects the curator's desire to go beyond the Western artist and value the work of women, who were not so recognized in their time. Among them, the Algerian Baya was a teenager who was beginning to make a name for herself with paintings full of flowers and decorative patterns when, in 1942, a Matisse who was already over 70 years old was contemplating "starting Painting again". Later, Baya put her career on standby to dedicate herself to raising her children, and her presence in the exhibition recalls the vicissitudes of women artists and art in the colonies. Baya and Matisse are united by the decorative element in their works, which had contributed to making the Frenchman one of the great artists of the 20th century. "Matisse never thought of the decorative as a lesser register, but rather throughout his life he considered it an important register," says the curator. Another of the most curious relationships is with Camouflage-H. Matisse. Lujo, calma y voluptuosidad, by Alain Jaquet, which is a veiled version of "El lujo I", by Matisse.

A radical artist and, later, a classic

Regarding the title of the exhibition, Verdier explains that, rather than talking about Matisse's influence in his time and after his death, he wants to talk "about an act of hospitality". The tour is divided into eight areas, beginning with those dedicated to neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Expressionism. "More than feeling comfortable with labels, more than being interested in the idea of movements, which are always a bit unsatisfactory, the common thread in Western painting of 1907-1908 is really expressiveness," says the curator. Emotions that managed to be captured with African art and other forms of original art that at that time remained outside the canon. "In what we call "primitivism", Matisse found a way to renew his art. He was an artist who constantly took risks, who constantly revised his milestones." On the other hand, regarding the sculptures he made during those years, Matisse said that he made them as a painter. "Sculpture was for him a means of resolving issues of painting," he warns.

Another of the influences that Matisse received during the early years of the 20th century was from masters like Giotto, whom he discovered during a trip to Italy in 1907. Later, a portrait titled The Algerian Woman" can be seen, which reflects how Matisse embraced the dimension of exoticism. "This oriental theatre, this exotic theatre, Matisse used it to reach the pinnacle of his ambition, which was the decorative," says the curator. The tour continues with Matisse's work during World War I – he was not mobilized, to his disappointment –, considered his "heroic years". He fought to broaden the limits of painting with "radical inventions" in color and the representation of spaces, as can be seen in Interior with a Goldfish Bowl" (1914).

Matisse's career took a turn when he settled in Nice in 1917 seeking the light. In the exhibition, works from the 1920s show how Matisse returned to a much more naturalistic and much less radical language, although he maintained his "decorative ambition". These are the years of "Matisse's classicism". At the end of the same decade, he invoked masters like Cézanne to overcome the stagnation he felt.

Matisse died in 1954. He had suffered health problems since 1941, when he underwent surgery for colon cancer, and since then his physical condition had been deteriorating. Despite everything, he carried out major projects, such as the Rosary Chapel in Vence, whose stained glass windows recall the cut-out papers that Matisse turned into a form of painting. The exhibition concludes with a reflection on the role of Matisse's work as an inspiration for later artists, such as Barnet Newman, Daniel Buren, or Shirley Jaffe. Among them is also the Russian video artist of Algerian origin Zoulikha Bouabdellah, represented by the video Ballem, in which she addresses identity, postcolonial, and gender issues with a belly dance to the tune of La Marseillaise.