Exhibitions
Chez Matisse: The legacy of a new painting
CaixaForum Barcelona hosts the universe of Matisse and the pictorial revolution that transformed 20th century art.
CaixaForum Barcelona and the Centre Pompidou in Paris have joined forces to present Chez Matisse. The legacy of a new painting , an exhibition that not only revisits the career of Henri Matisse, but also proposes a deep reading of his impact on 20th century art. With 45 works by Matisse and 49 pieces by contemporaries such as Pierre Bonnard , Georges Braque, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Le Corbusier, Albert Marquet and Pablo Picasso, the exhibition establishes a constant dialogue between influences and resonances, building a map of the artistic renewal that shook Europe a hundred years ago.
From Pont Saint-Michel (1900), a work that already announces the tension between primitive and sophisticated, classical and wild, figuration and abstraction, we perceive a restless artist, capable of subverting conventions without losing visual coherence. Matisse not only absorbed the world around him, but also left his mark on all those with whom he shared his space and his ideas, creating the mythical “Matisse house”: a symbolic place of encounter and experimentation where painting became conversation and discovery.
Henri Matisse, Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges [Interior with fishbowl], spring 1914. Center Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d'art moderne / Center de création industrielle AM 4311 P © Succession H. Matisse/ VEGAP/ 2025. Photograph: © Center Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn.
Matisse's genius lies in his way of reformulating color, of structuring pictorial space as a living and sensitive surface, and of combining freedom and rigor with a naturalness that seems effortless. His collages, still lifes, interiors and odalisques not only capture form, but propose a language of their own, a way of seeing and feeling that challenges the established hierarchy of academic art. His painting is at once explosive and meditative, emotional and rational, and today retains a force that continues to inspire artists around the world.
Chez Matisse is not just a retrospective: it is a critical and poetic exercise on the artist's capacity to transform visual language. Each room reveals his freedom to play with tensions —between figure and abstraction, between domesticity and exoticism, between order and chaos— and shows how his work redefined pictorial modernity. One hundred years later, Matisse remains an essential reference for understanding the formal and chromatic revolution that still resonates in contemporary creation. The exhibition can be seen at CaixaForum Barcelona until August 16, as an invitation to immerse yourself in the universe of one of the masters who made color and form a true sensorial and intellectual experience.
Natàlia Gontxarova, Nature morte au homard [Still life with lobster], 1909-1910. Center Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d'art moderne / Center de création industrielle AM 81-65-857 © Natàlia Gontxarova, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2025. Photograph: © Center Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Hélène Mauri/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn.
You may be
interested
...
