Selections from The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection. 1911-1942 by Celina Perez Blanco

I91I

-1942

In a draft of his very first letter to Balthus in early1938,

artist'sslow output, Pierre continued for the next fifty years,

Pierre Matisse wrote that he did not practice the craft

until his death in 1989, to cultivateand support Balthus.

of an art dealer as it had been done in former days. He

Galleryrecordsshow that he often held on to the artist's works for decades in order to place them strategicallyin

explainedthat he had a "horrorof playing cat and mouse with artists"and continued: "Help me to make our exhi-

museums in this country and in Europe.

bition."His exquisite sense of collaboration and forthrightnessmarkedPierre Matisse'srelationshipswith all

During his annual summervisit to Paris in 1938,Pierre posed for this portrait in Balthus'sstudio at cour de Rohan,

his artists.

behind place de L'Odeon. After his notorious exhibition

Pierre had discovered Balthus's work in 1934, after having

missed the artist'sfirst one-man exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in Paris earlierthat year.That exhibition, with its five large paintings characterizedby a hard-edgederoticism,had caused what was for the period a "scandal."Since nobody in Francewould touch these works, they were still languishing at the GaleriePierre when Pierre Matisse saw them. Over the following four years Pierre Matisse courted Balthusthrough letters, to which the latter responded with

at the GaleriePierre, Balthusturned to portraits.In these works he mingled truthfulness,stylization, and often elements of the bizarre.He also reducedhis palette to a narrow, almost monochromaticrange of browns, grays, and blacks, enlivenedby only the occasional patch of red, as here in Pierre'sleft sock. The FrenchPierre Matisse was known for his reticence and reserve.Balthus,however,depicted him in a relaxed

silence. Finally,in I938, Matisse mounted the artist'sfirst

pose as a jaunty Americanwearinga loud-patterned tie. Shortly afterWorld War II the painting disappearedfrom

one-man exhibition in this country without Balthus'spartici-

the storehouse in which Matisse had placed it. During the

pation. It had taken Pierre more than a year to gather the fifteen works for the show; most of them were loans from

late I970S, when asked about the picture, he could not

two dealersin Paris and not for sale, and he sold only two. Notwithstanding these and future frustrationsincluding the

rememberits whereabouts.When the portrait surfacedin I991,exactlytwo years after Pierre'sdeath, it was acquired SR by his widow, Maria-Gaetana.

Balthus,French,I908-2001 Pierre Matisse I938

Oil on canvas 51Y x 35 in. (130.2 x 88.9 cm)

The Pierreand Maria-GaetanaMatisse Collection,2002 2002.456.7

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BA L T H U S

CHAGALL

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CHIRICO

Marc Chagall, French, born Russia, 1887-1985

TheBetrothed 1911

Oil on canvas I8 x 15 in. (45.7 X 38.1 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002

2002.456.8

Like Giorgio de Chirico, who created his most elegiac Italian cityscapes when he was living in Paris from I9II to 1915,Marc Chagall conjured up his native Russia in the works he painted from I9Io to 1914 while a resident of the

he evoked as a bride French capital. Here, in TheBetrothed, his faraway fiancee, Bella Rosenfeld, whom he married upon his return to Vitebsk in 1915.The picture's limited palette of blue and white is unusual within the artist's oeuvre, and the brighter colors showing through the white paint suggest that Chagall might have reused an old canvas. Pierre Matisse had coveted Chagall's works since 1924, when he first met the artist in Paris. Chagall was loath to part with his pictures, but in 1941 Pierre was able to mount a one-man show that turned into a "blockbuster" and was followed by sixteen more exhibitions until i982, three years before the artist's death. De Chirico became known to the American public through a number of exhibitions held during the late I92os and early 1930S at various galleries in New York. These were shows of his so-called late works, prancing Rococo stallions, classical ruins, and posing gladiators. Almost

Giorgio de Chirico, Italian, I888-I978

Self-Portrait I9II

Oil on canvas 343/8

x 275 in. (87.3 x 69.9 cm)

Gift in memory of Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff,

1970

I970.I66

unknown in this country were his very early metaphysical paintings of I9I0-18 that had been such an inspiration for the Surrealists. In 1935 Pierre Matisse mounted an exhibition of those little-known paintings at his gallery, and it created an enormous amount of attention in the press. He had admired de Chirico for a long time and had spent the entire summer of 1935 gathering the twenty-six paintings for the show, borrowing several from Andre Breton and Paul Eluard. The artist is shown at the right in a self-portrait SR painted when he was only twenty-three. II

ERAIN

Andre Derain, French, 1880-1954

Andre Derain has been acclaimedfor the Fauve works that he painted with Henri Matisse in the south of France and

TheTable

with Maurice de Vlaminck in the north between I905 and

I9II

which Pierre Matisse I906. The austerestill life, TheTable,

Oil on canvas 38 x 5I18 in. (96.5 x 131.1 cm)

Purchase,Catharine LorillardWolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1954 54-79

sold to the Museum in 1954,demonstratesa few years later Derain'srejection of the brilliant Fauvepalette for an emphasis on muted colors and structure.Derain'spassion for learning led him to look for inspiration to the art of the past, to Cezanne and to the Dutch and French seventeenth-centurystill-life tradition. TheBlackFeather Boadepicts Derain'sfavoriteniece, Genevieve

Andre Derain, French, I880-1954

Thailland (b. 19I9), the daughterof his wife Alice's sister. For the occasion Genevievemodeled a yellow-and-red

TheBlackFeather Boa

checkeddress and cape, the sophisticated cut of which adds

I935 Oil on canvas

yearsto the appearanceof this sixteen-year-old.The black featherboa trails to the floor, and an orange straw hat

64 x 38'2 in. (162.6 x 97.8 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002 2002.456.10

dangles from her left arm. Pierre Matisse remainedattached to Derain-his mentor during his own brief careeras a student-painter-showing the artist'swork in one-man exhibitions in 1940 and 1944 and acquiringthis picture at auction in New York in May I989. TheBlackFeather Boaand Magritte's TheEternally Obvious(p. 54) were the last paintings Matisse R purchasedbefore his death in August of that year.

R A I N

M IR6

Joan Mir6, Spanish, I893-1983

ThisIs theColorof My Dreams

Painting

1925

Oil on canvas

1927 Tempera and oil on canvas

38 x 51 in. (96.5 x 129.5 cm)

283

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002

Gift of Pierre Matisse in memory of Pierre Loeb, I984

2002.456.5

I984.207

X 364 in. (73 X 92.1 cm)

M I R6

In Paris during the mid-i9zos and again in the mid-i93os, Mir6 combined words with painted images in two different

Balthus.Matisse'srapport with the former, however,was

series of paintings, each consisting of about ten works. This Is theColorof My Dreamsbelongs to the earlierseries, which

[Mir6's] dealer Pierre Loeb gave me a painting as a bait. There was a blue star and a red dot. I thanked him and

Mir6 called "paintingpoems."As had become his habit, he wrote these phrases in French.Prominentlyscripted in

put it awayin a closet, I just didn't get it. Then one day I went to the Salon des Independantsin Paris.I suddenly

elegant copperplate on a surfacepainted uniform white, the word "photo" suggests that what we see is simply a

became indifferent and suspicious. I thought that none of

photograph. Its subject, Mir6 explains in the inscription, is his favoritecolor, the color of his dreams,identified by

depressed.I took everythingoff the walls. In the closet I saw the Miro. It was a composition that had a precision all

the bold burst of blue.

its own. Mir6 wanted to do the maximum with the mini-

Although on occasion obliged to do so, Pierre Matisse disliked sharingrepresentationof a living artist with other

mum. I didn't need to know what it was about. It was a

dealers.An exception was Pierre Loeb, at whose avant-garde GaleriePierre in Paris he first saw paintings by Mir6 and

not immediate.He later recalledto Rosamond Bernier:"In i928

those paintings meant anything.I came home, terribly

revelation.Life was bursting out everywhere." Pierre Matisse kept the painting, untitled by Mir6, for many years.

WSL

~ ~ zI H':

N G U Y

YvesTanguy,American,born France,I900-I955

Title Unknown I926 Oil with string on canvas 364 x 255/ in. (92 x 65.1 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002 2002.456.6

A child sporting a red dress and a wild mane of hair and floating in a blue sea is flattened by a cart from which sproutsa tree made of strings.A "family"of fish approaches from the right. Despite its pronounced naivete, this painting shows a remarkableassuredness,considering that the selftaughtTanguy had begun to paint in oil only a year earlier, in 1925. In that year he met Andre Breton, the leader of the Surrealistgroup, which he joined. His ensuing friendship with the older poet, who served him as both influence and advocate,proved decisive for the artist. Breton regarded Tanguy as one of the purest painters among the Surrealists. This childlike poetic work alreadycontains the seeds of Tanguy'sfuture paintings. By the following year,after hav-

YvesTanguy,American,born France,I900-1955

ing gained further technical skill, he had found his unique personal style. From then until his death in I955,Tanguy

I954

focused on the same dreamlikesubject: a plain, stretching

Oil on canvas

towardinfinity and renderedin a precise and illusionistic

39 x 32 in. (99.

technique, which is deserted except for variousfantastic biomorphic objects, or rocks and bone forms as seen in The Mirageof Time-acquired from Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1955.

TheMirageof Time

x 81.3 cm)

GeorgeA. Hearn Fund, 1955 55-95

YvesTanguy was a former classmateof Pierre Matisse's at the Lycee Montaigne in Paris.Matisse began showing Tanguy'swork in 1939,the year the painter moved to the United States.

GIACOMETTI

Alberto Giacometti,Swiss, 1901-1966

StillLffewithan Apple I937

Oil on canvas 28g x 29% in. (71.8 x 74.9 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002

2002.456.3

Although until 1946 he devoted himself mostly to sculpture, Alberto Giacometti was both a sculptor and painter. Since he created only about a dozen canvases during the preceding decades, it is remarkable that he turned out in a single year, I937, two still lifes of a small yellow apple. One, a close-up view, is now in a private New York collection. The previous year France had celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Cezanne's death with a large retrospective and numerous books and articles. Giacometti honored

Alberto Giacometti,Swiss, I901o-966

Cezanne with these two still lifes. The artist began the composition with several apples. According to his brother Diego, however, he then decided that one sufficed. The fruit he chose is not much larger than the knob of the sideboard's right drawer. Giacometti heightened the drama between the tiny apple and the large rustic sideboard by placing them both at a distance from

TheApple I937

Oil on canvas Io0i x Io2 in. (26.6 x 26.6 cm)

Private Collection, New York

the viewer. The paintings depict the interior of the family's summer house at Maloja, Switzerland. The reddish wood of the sideboard and the wainscoting form a warm monochrome background for the apple, the yellow hue of which is echoed in the strip of the wall above. Although Pierre Matisse had known Giacometti since 1936, it took him twelve years to mount his first exhibition for the artist in 1948. The still life at left was in that exhibition, and Matisse never parted with it, keeping it for his own collection.

CARRINGTON

Leonora Carrington,the daughterof an English industrialist, spent her childhood on a country estate, surroundedby animals and immersedin fairy tales and Celtic legends. She studied painting at the art school founded by Amedee Ozenfant in London. At a dinner in London in 1937she met the German-bornSurrealistpainter Max Ernst and followed him to Paris.That year,they moved to St. Martin d'Ardechein the south of France.They lived in a group of ruined buildings that they renovatedand decoratedwith mythical animals and birds.The idyll was destroyedwhen the GermansoccupiedFrancein 1940 and Ernst was interned. In this self-portrait, also called TheInn of theDawnHorse, the twenty-one-year-oldCarringtonsports tight white jodhpurs,Victorian buttoned boots, a seaweedgreen jacket,and a wild mane of dark hair.The only furniturein this unfathomable room, with its disturbinglyindustrial-lookingshiny tile floor, is the blue armchair.Marooned in this strange

Max ErnstAstridea RockingHorse I938

Photographby LeonoraCarrington 758

7/8

in. (I9.4 x 19.4 cm)

Briihl,Germany Courtesyof Max-Ernst-Kabinett,

setting, Carringtonhas as her only companion a prancing hyena with three pendulous breasts.The large white rocking horse and its shadow may be painted on the wall. It resembles the one on which her companion, Ernst, is shown in the photograph at left. In the self-portrait a landscape painting festooned with yellow curtains displays another smallerhorse.The strangecast of charactersmight have tumbled out of one of the bizarre stories that Carrington wrote in 1937-38,in which the image of the white horse often looms. Recent X-rays and reflectogramsshow that Carrington originallywore a tight black decollete top, that a small side table with objects on top stood next to the armchair,and that a doll, now obliteratedby a cloudlike stain, was lying on the far left. Max Ernst gave the painting to Pierre Matisse for safekeeping in the early i94os. The work was virtuallyunknown until it was shown at Carrington'sretrospectivein New York in 1976.

CARRINGTON

Leonora Carrington, Mexican, born England, 1917

Self-Portrait I938 Oil on canvas 25Y x 32 in. (65 x 81.3 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002

2002.456.1

LAM

Gabon or Republicof Congo (Ambete)

Figure Reliquary i9th century Wood, pigment,metal,cowrieshells H. 32g in. (82.6 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002

2002.456.17

Wifredo Lam, Cuban, I902-1982

Goddess withFoliage 1942 Gouache on paper 412

x 33%in. (105.4 x 85.1 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002

2002.456.32

In the autumn of 1934Pierre Matisse mounted an exhibition of Oceanic art, which was still relativelyunknown in this country.Then, in the spring of 1935,he showed, to critical acclaim,African sculpturefrom the collection of

Lam returnedto his native Cuba in 1941,after having spent eighteen years in Europe, first in Spain and then in Paris.Picasso had become a friend and supporter, as had Andre Breton, the Frenchpoet and leader of the Surrealists.

CharlesRatton, the famed Parisiandealer of tribal art. Probablyamong the works in that exhibition was this male

Breton persuadedPierre Matisse to give Lam his first exhibition in this country in 1942. The poet also wrote the

reliquaryfigure that Pierre kept throughout his life. The sculpture'shollow interior is a receptaclefor ancestralrelics.

introduction to the catalogue and invented the French titles of all fourteen gouaches included in the show. This

Elements of African, Cubist, and Surrealistart seem to be blended in the hybrid creatureportrayedby the Cuban

figure'sregal bearing and surrounding foliage inspired Breton to give it the title Deesseavecfeuillage. Matisse kept

artistWifredo Lam.The pointed ears,horse'smuzzle, two fruit-shapedbreasts,and expressivehands combine animal,

this work for his own collection and continued to support Lam with five more exhibitions until I982, the year the

vegetal, and human elements.

artist died.