Selections from The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection. 1943-1964 by Celina Perez Blanco

1943

-1964

With the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941,contact between Pierre Matisse and his artists in

blue pitcher,along with assortedsamplesof linoleum and

Europe became difficult. Letters, then the main means of communication-with telegramsin urgent cases-took a

name of a French bleach, JAVEL.

long time to cross the ocean.The shipment of works of art came to a near halt. Not so the movements of the artists

organizedexhibitions of the two artists whose careers would be foreverlinked to his gallery.In 1947 he introduced

themselves,many of whom sought refuge in this country. In 1942 Matisse mounted a group show, "Artistsin Exile."

to this country the work of JeanDubuffet, the most important painter to emergein Franceat the end of the war.

Fourteen very different artists, including Mondrian, Leger,

Dubuffet's subjects were ordinary-Paris streets of no particular distinction and casual portraits of his friends. His

Ernst, Matta, Tanguy,Chagall,Breton, Masson, Ozenfant, and Lipchitz, among others, were exhibited together in what is now consideredan historic event. During the warMatissemade do, as did manyother gallery owners in New York, by mounting group exhibitions from

wallpaper,nails, pliers, and screwdrivers,topped by the brand After the limitations imposed by the war ended, Matisse

style, seeminglyuntutored, was bold and direct, and to some his creationsappearedas raw as the unorthodox materials with which he painted them. Matisse showed Dubuffet's works in ten one-man exhibitions until 1959.

existingstock.In March1943,for example,he organized"War and the Artist,"featuringworks by Chagall,Ernst, Masson,

Giacometti'swork, after having been in contact with the

Matta, Mir6, Picasso,Rouault,Siqueiros,andTamayo.

artist now and then since 1936,when he first considered

PierreMatisse, in I934, explainedin a letter to the AmericansculptorAlexanderCalderthat it was "often with regret"that he refrainedfrom showing the works of

In 1948 Matisse mounted his first exhibition of Alberto

signing him on. Giacometti was then virtuallyunknown in this country.The show, featuringbronzes, original plasters,

Americanartists.Calderwas one exception;anotherwas the

drawings,and paintings, was an overviewof his oeuvre from 1925 until I947. The cataloguewas exceptional.Jean-Paul

painterLoren Maclver.She was among the few woman artists he supported,and he exhibitedher paintingsnine times from

Sartre,philosopher and friend of the artist, wrote the introduction. Giacometti contributed an autobiographicalletter

until 1987.Maclver had a poet's sensibility.She saw

with drawingsof his works and also composed the Tentative

1940

beautyin banal everydayobjects and made them the subjects of her art. In a conversationabout ten yearsago, Maclver said that for her, the sound of the Frenchword quincaillerie

of EarlyWorks, Catalogue accompaniedby drawingsof them. The catalogue also contained dramaticphotographs by PatriciaO'Connell Kane, who became Matisse'swife in

(hardware)-the presentpainting'stitle-evoked the hard noise of clangingmetal. Indeed, the pictureis a collage-like

1949, of bronzes and plasters standing in the corners of Giacometti'sforbiddinglydesolate studio that evoked

jumbleof brooms, pot scrubbers,a fryingpan, and a large

images from a Samuel Beckettplay.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 速 www.jstor.org

M ACI V ER

Loren MacIver, American, 1909-1998

Quincaillerie I954

Oil on canvas 36 x 28 in. (91.4 x 71.1 cm)

Maria-Gaetana Matisse Gift, 1993 1993.278

M IR6

Joan Mir6, Spanish, I893-1983

Woman

Moonbird

I949

I944

Bronze

H. io08 in. (27 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2ooz

2002.456.122

During a seriesof conversationsin 1975,Mir6 was askedhow one might go about interpretingthe subjectsof his late nonfigurativeworks.Miro replieddisarmingly:"It might be a dog, a woman, or whatever.I don't reallycare. Of course, while I

in. (I8.4 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002

2002.456.I2I

Birds and women have alwaysloomed large in Miro's work: in his celebratedseries of twenty-threegouaches, Constellations, of 1941;the hundreds of drawings,pastels,

am painting, I see a woman or bird in my mind, indeed,

and gouaches of 1942-43; and the hundreds of small paintings of 1944-45. When Miro began working in clay and

very tangibly a woman or a bird. Afterward,it's up to you."

making sculpturesin the round in I944, women and birds

M I R

continued to dominate his work. The first examples that he completed in 1944 were the seven-inch tall Moonbird,or

With its pneumatic earthbound feet, short sprouting arms, and small head, Woman (bearing little resemblanceto

LunarBird, and its pendant, SolarBird.Twenty-two years later Moonbirdwas the model for Mir6s seven-foot bronze version,

its title) also served as a model for largervariantsof the subject.

which stood, until the present restructuring, in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art.

GIACOMETTI

Alberto Giacometti,Swiss, 1901-1966

TallFigure I947

Bronze H.

79f

in. (20o.9 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2oo2 2002.456.III

In 1945Giacometti abandoned one-or-two-inch-tall figures in favorof largerones. By 1947 he had adopted what was to become his characteristicstyle, creatingextremelyattenuated sculpturesthat, as he wrote in 1948, "achieveda resemblance only when long and slender."There were three main themes: the walking man, the bust or head, and the standing nude woman-or sometimes all three combined.The nude woman in TallFigurestands nearlyseven feet. Without volume or mass, she appearsweightless and remote, her eerie otherwordliness accentuated by the matte beige paint that Giacometti applied over the bronze patina.The sculpture looks as if it has withstood centuriesof rough weatherthat has left its surfacecrusty and eroded.The work was shown at the artist'sfirst exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in I948, the year Matisse acquiredit. Giacometti said of Diego, his younger brother (by one year),who is shown here:" Diego sat for me 1o,ooo times.... He's posed for me over a longer period of time and more often than anyone else. From 1935to 1940 he posed for me every day, and again after the war for years.So when I draw or sculpt or paint a head from memory it alwaysturns out to be more or less Diego's head, because Diego's head I've done more often from life."Diego was a known artisanin his own right. His elegantmetal furnitureand objects, decorated with classicaldetails or naive animal or plant forms, have become coveted collector'sitems today.

GIACOMETTI

Alberto Giacometti, Swiss,

I901-I966

Diego

Alberto Giacometti, Swiss,

I90o-I966

Studiesof Diego

1950

I962

Painted bronze

Ballpoint pen and ink on paper

in. (28 cm)

84 x 68 in. (21 x 15-5 cm)

Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, I998

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002

I999.363.23

2002.456.30

DUBUFFET

Jean Dubuffet,

French, I901-I985

A Widow 1943

Oil on canvas 36 x 283 in. (91.4 x 73 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002 2002.456.2

Dubuffet was a highly culturedman who counted poets and writers among his friends. He studied art history, philosophy, literature,and music, and worked in various careers,including that of wine merchant.He collected pictures by untrainedoutsiders, calling them artbrut("raw art"). His admirationfor this form of "antiart"-which he regardedas more authentic and imaginative-led him to reject traditional art with its conventionalmethods and values of "beautiful"and "ugly"Becausehe wanted his own works to be accessibleto ordinarypeople and to relate to

DUBUFFET

I , ,,

}o4

.. i 4 4

Jean Dubuffet,

French,

90oI-I985

Jean Dubuffet, French, I9oI-I985

Torment Telephone

A Manwitha Cat

1944

1943

Lithograph on paper

Charcoalon paper

127

978

in. (32.7 X 25.I cm)

13'

IO4

in. (33.7 x 26 cm)

The Pierreand Maria-GaetanaMatisse Collection,2002

2002.456.65

2002.456.26

their daily lives, he adopted mundane subjects.However,his

blue and green tints, it is unclear if she is wearingany

treatmentof them seemed shocking, ungraceful,and rude.

garments. The artist conjuredup two different moods in the litho-

TheWidowbelongs to a group of paintings showing activities of ordinarypeople: couples kissing or enjoying their honeymoon, a naked woman trying on a hat, a man milking a cow.The hourglassshape of the widow is nearlyencircled by the thin rail of the chair.Only her curved arms protrude. Her only concession to mourning is the veil reaching down to her waist. As the chair'swood and the widow's

graph and the drawing.The man on the left is literally "wired"between the receiverstuck to his left ear and what looks like an amplifierplugged into his right, with both pieces of equipment connected to the same telephone. On the right Monsieur Ribaud, Dubuffet's framer,feeds a cat. The artist inscribed the drawingto Pierre Matisse.

flesh seem made of the same matter, fire-enginered with 49

DUBUFFET

Jean Dubuffet, French, I90o-I985

Garden Mother-of-Pearl I956

Cut pieces of previously painted oils on canvas pasted on canvas 15 X 24% in. (38.1 x 62.2 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2oo2 2002.456.1I

DUBUFFET

Dubuffet's contempt for the traditions of art extended to its media. His use of unorthodox materials-pebbles, leaves,bark, or butterfly wings-in portraits, figures,landscapes, or gardencompositions transformedthese ordinary subjects.In 1955he createda gardenseries using butterfly wings. Instead of finishing the series with nature'sreadymades, he produced his own materials in a very time-

consuming process. From a painted canvashe cut small pieces in various shapes and then glued them, side by side, to another canvas.The allover "inlaid"pattern suggestiveof pebbles,leaves,rosettes, and blossoms inspired him to call the work at left Jardinaux nacre(Mother-of-Pearl Garden). BeardGarden belongs to a seriesof more than one-hundred works in various media depicting, depending on one's point of view, busts as beardsor beardsas busts. Perhapsechoing the visual "pun" he created, Dubuffet gave these works

titles such as BeardCastleor TheBeardof LostOpportunities, playing on the Frenchword barbein almost endless variations. He began the Beard series in May 1959 in response

to an article by the writer Georges Limbourg,a childhood friend. In his text Limbourg comparedDubuffet to a Greek Stoic or an Oriental sage. Surprisedand amused, the artist sent a letter to Limbourg with a drawing of a bearded Marcus Aurelius. Two more drawings of heavily bearded

busts followed, and the series of beardshad begun. SR

Jean Dubuffet,

French,

9o1-1985

Beard Garden I959 Torn printed papers pasted on paper 20 x 13/2 in. (50.8 x 34-3 cm)

The Pierreand Maria-GaetanaMatisse Collection,zooz 2oo002,456.29

M AS

Raymond Mason, British, born

I922

del'Odeon Carrefour

Reg Butler, British, I913-I98I

Girlon a RoundBase

I958

I964

Bronze

40 x 624 in. (Ioi.6 x 158.1 cm)

H. i8 in. (45.8 cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2oo2

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection,

2002.456.112

2002.456.110

The studio of English sculptor Raymond Mason is just a few blocks from the carrefourde l'Odeon, the intersection

figures of the walking pedestriansappearmotionless, whereasthose of the patrons sitting in the cafe seem in

shown in this relief.The artist managedto fit at least forty figures into this work, which evokes prototypes as different

motion.

as Roman funeral or EarlyRenaissancereliefs.The matte

commission for the RecreationalCentre at the CrystalPalace

beige paint that Mason applied suggeststhe limestone facades lining the streets of this historic quarter.Interestingly,the

in London. Apparently,the large female nude was felt to be

2002

Reg Butler's Girl on a RoundBase is a study for a canceled

out of keeping with her intended surroundings.

BUTLER

M AGRITTE

Rene Magritte, Belgian, I898-1967

TheEternallyObvious 1948

Oil on canvasmountedon board Head: 8%x 6/ in. (2I.9 x 17.1 cm) Breasts: 6'% x Uii in. (17 x 29.2 cm) Pubes: 9O x 7 in. (24.1 x 17.8 cm) x 94 in. (7.5 x 23.5 cm) Knees: 67% Feet: 9 x 6 in. (22.9 x 15.2 cm)

The Pierreand Maria-GaetanaMatisseCollection,2002 2oo2.456.L2a-f

Magritte painted the body of a naked blonde model, cut from the canvasthe body's five choice bits, surrounded them in gold frames,and originally assembledthem on a sheet of glass.This work is a variantof the artist'sfamous 1930prototype of the same title, for which his wife, Georgette, posed. In the earlierpicture Georgette'sface is seen in a three-quarterview; she stands in a contrapposto pose, and her body is not as rigidly frontal as it is here. The notoriety achieved by the earlier version coincided with its role in the cult of the Surrealistobject in the 1930s. Magritte plays tricks with our perception in these "pictureobjects."Although the body is in sections, we automatically fill in the missing areasand see a "complete"nude woman. The artist'sNew York dealer,AlexanderIolas, wanted to show this work in an exhibition at his gallery in 1948. Fearfil of U.S. Customs' interferenceat its entry into this country,Iolas orderedMagritte to omit the pubic hair. Another artist from the gallery,BernardPfriem, completed the delicate task of repaintingit. Pierre Matisse acquiredthis "portrait"and Derain's portrait of his well-dressedniece (see p. 13),at a Sotheby's SR auction in New York in May 1989.

D ELVAUX

Paul Delvaux, Belgian, I897-I994

Trains fascinated Delvaux from his childhood. His first

SmallTrainStationat Night

railwaystation depictions were populated by languid female nudes. By the late I95oshis trademarknudes disappearedin

1959 Oil on canvas 55y X 67 in. (140.3 x

170.2

cm)

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002.456.9

favor of young girls looking pensively at departing trains. With the absence of those figures,this work seems remark-

2002

ably sober. Nothing seems out of the ordinaryexcept the enormous moon. The artist shipped this painting to New York for a oneman show in I959;Pierre Matisse acquiredit that year. SR