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

BarcelonaDuring one of his stays in Colliure, Henri Matisse painted a small landscape, La Moulade. With the characteristic colorful fury of Fauvism, the painting is made up of a set of vibrant color patches: red, green, blue, yellow. The lines are totally secondary. La Moulade measures only 28.6 x 35.7 centimeters, but for another Fauvist, André Derain, this painting is like "dynamite". 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, recalls, 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 are from Matisse's entire career. La Moulade is an important novelty compared to the exhibition that could be seen at CaixaForum Madrid. The rest of the 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 teacher, the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, told Matisse, when he was a young artist in the 1890s, that he would simplify painting – explains the curator. Indeed, he did and went further: he revolutionized it. He was a masterful colorist who invented forms that are still current".

Matisse is considered the painter of "joy", which does not exclude that he had a "critical restlessness", she affirms. "More than any other artist, Matisse embodied the idea of search, of a work carried out patiently, against all odds", Verdier reiterates. Another of the stars of the exhibition is Luxury, Calm, and Voluptuousness (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 can be considered a small, classic retrospective of Matisse and, at the same time, a committed and current view. 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 at the time were not as recognized. Among them, the Algerian Baya was an adolescent 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 minor register, but rather throughout his life he considered it an important register," says the curator. Another of the most curious relationships is found with Camouflage-H. Matisse. Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness, by Alain Jaquet, which is a covert version of "The Luxury 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 sections, starting 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 always turn out to be a bit unsatisfactory, the common thread in Western painting of the years 1907-1908 is really expressiveness," says the curator. Emotions that managed to be fixed with African art and other forms of original art that at that time were outside the canon. "In what we call "primitivism", Matisse found a way to renew his art. He was an artist who permanently took risks, who constantly reviewed his achievements." On the other hand, regarding the sculptures he made during those years, Matisse said he made them as a painter. "Sculpture was for him a means of resolving painting issues," she notes.

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 Girl, can be seen, which reflects how Matisse embraced the dimension of exoticism. "This Oriental theater, this exotic theater, Matisse used it to reach the peak 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 Fish Tank (1914).

Matisse's career took a turn when he settled in Nice in 1917 seeking the light. In the exhibition, the 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 Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, whose stained glass windows recall the cut-out papers that Matisse turned into a form of painting. The exhibition ends with a reflection on the role of Matisse's work as an inspiration for later artists, such as Barnett 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.