Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were two of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Following abdominal surgery in 1941, Matisse was no longer able to paint. Rather than abandon art, he began painting with scissors, transforming paint and paper into a world of plants, animals, figures and shapes. These were his cut-outs, and a selection of them along with Matisse’s illustrations and prints are on display at Naples Art Institute in an exhibition titled “Art in Balance: Matisse and His Illustrated Works.”
“We are proud to host over a hundred works that mainly focus on Matisse’s final 15 years or so, when he turned to making cut-outs and where he was especially keen on making illustrations for book publications and so on, and poems,” Naples Art Institute Executive Director Frank Verpoorten said.
The exhibition highlights Matisse’s mastery in balancing intense colors with bold black contrasts.
The exhibition also delves into Matisse’s deeply spiritual final years, during which he designed his artistic testament — the chapel in Venice.
Photographs by Hélène Adant provide a rare glimpse into the reflective and practical moments behind this monumental project, revealing Matisse’s creative process and enduring "joie de vivre."
“Of course, everyone loves the name Matisse, so we’re thinking that’s going to draw the necessary crowds and create the necessary excitement here,” Verpoorten added.
“Art in Balance” is on view through April 13.
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Henri Matisse is widely regarded as the greatest colorist of the 20th century. He rivaled Pablo Picasso in the importance of his innovations.
He first achieved prominence as the leader of the French movement Fauvism. He rejected Cubism and instead sought to use color as the foundation for expressive, decorative, and often monumental paintings.
He wrote that he sought to create an art that would be "a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair."
Still life and the nude remained favorite subjects throughout his career.
According to the Museum of Modern Art, Matisse’s cut-outs were created in distinct phases. “The raw materials—paper and gouache—were purchased, and the two materials combined: studio assistants painted sheets of paper with gouache. Matisse then cut shapes from these painted papers and arranged them into compositions.”
For smaller compositions, the artist worked directly on a board using pins. For larger compositions, Matisse directed his studio assistants to arrange them on the wall of his studio. Subsequently, cut-outs were mounted permanently, either in the studio or in Paris by professional mounters.
Matisse’s embrace of cut-outs was necessitated by his failing health, which was characterized by confinement in bed and a wheelchair during the last 13 years of his life. However, the Museum of Modern Art notes that the predicate for this art form was laid more than two decades earlier.
“Years before Matisse conceived of the cut-outs as an independent medium, he employed the technique as an expedient to realize work in other mediums,” notes MoMA in the syllabus for its own exhibition of Matisse cut-outs in 2014. “As early as 1919, he used cut paper to design the décor for a ballet, Le Chant de Rossignol. When composing the mural "The Dance" commissioned by Dr. Albert Barnes, in the early 1930s, he learned that covering large areas with sheets of painted paper allowed him to make changes more efficiently than he could by repainting. In 1937–38, he cut and pinned painted paper to design a second dance production, Rouge et noir. And in 1940–41, he used cut paper to resolve the compositions of two paintings. Though he would not consider a cut-out to be an autonomous work of art until 1946, the groundwork was laid to create through this technique. The cut-outs ‘were a long time in the making,’ Matisse acknowledged, developing in secret.
Long before Matisse’s cut-outs became immersive, environmental works, he dreamed of creating on a grand scale.
“In 1942, he expressed to the writer Louis Aragon that he had ‘an unconscious belief in a future life…some paradise where I shall paint frescoes,’” the MoMA syllabus concluded. “And in 1947, he acknowledged the influence of Islamic art which, he said, “suggests a greater space, a truly plastic space.” Inventing the cut-out medium allowed him to fulfill this ambition to make monumental decorations that transcended the confines of easel painting.”
The Naples Art Institute also points out that printmaking was central to Matisse’s creative journey, serving as an extension of his drawing. Through lithographs, pochoirs, and linocuts, Matisse revealed his working process, creating over 800 engravings that reflect his resilient spirit, especially during the later years when painting grew physically challenging.
The Naples Art Institute is at 585 Park Street, Naples, FL 34102.
Gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.