Matisse: Painter as Sculptor

January 21–April 29, 2007
Dallas Museum of Art and Nasher Sculpture Center

The Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center have partnered to present the first major exhibition in more than two decades to explore Henri Matisse’s sculptural works. Matisse: Painter as Sculptor will examine the artist’s sculpture as a vital part of a multifaceted conversation among the different media in his work and will reach further than any before to highlight Matisse’s achievements as a sculptor. Featuring more than 150 sculptures, paintings, and drawings, as well as photographs of the artist at work, the exhibition will present new insight into Matisse’s creative process and will contextualize his achievement through comparative works of other modern masters.

Organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, Matisse: Painter as Sculptor will be on view concurrently at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center from January 21 through April 29, 2007, with each institution displaying different sections of the exhibition. Following the Dallas presentation, the exhibition will travel to San Francisco and Baltimore.

Matisse: Painter as Sculptor is organized thematically around a core group of more than forty of Matisse’s great sculptural masterworks, which will be complemented with a selection of related works on paper, paintings, and original photographs of the artist at work. These integrated groupings will help illuminate the evolution of Matisse’s sculptural ideas and creative process and reveal the dialogue between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional in his oeuvre. For instance, the bronze sculpture Reclining Nude I (Aurora) (1907), will be exhibited alongside the majestic painting Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra (1907), a canvas that Matisse was painting during a key and difficult moment in the modeling of the sculpture. The painted and sculpted representations of the reclining female nude evolved together and were inextricably linked. Other exhibition highlights include the bronze sculptures Madeleine I and Madeleine II (1901 and 1903), the five portrait busts of Jeannette (1910–1914), and the monumental series of four bronze reliefs known as The Backs (1909–1930), Matisse’s most sustained exploration of the reduction and abstraction of the human form.

Select works by Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin, among other modern masters, will contextualize Matisse’s work, his dialogue with the figurative tradition, and the radical nature of his sculpture in the history of modern art.

Matisse: Painter as Sculptor is jointly organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and The Baltimore Museum of Art. The national tour is presented by Bank of America, the exhibition’s exclusive corporate partner. The presentation in Dallas is made possible by The Dallas Foundation. This exhibition is supported by The Eugene McDermott Foundation and an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Additional organizing support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Hotel accommodations provided by Hilton Anatole. Promotional support provided by CBS Radio, DART, Lamar Transit and Outdoor, and WFAA.

New Research on Matisse’s Sculptural Process

The exhibition will present groundbreaking technical research that sheds light on Matisse’s sculptural process, both in the studio and in the foundry, and on the slight variations in scale and form of his great works in series. Comparative studies of specific sculptures were made using a laser scanning process, which allows for minute comparisons of different casts of the same work of art (for instance, Matisse’s Madeleine I and Madeleine II). These scans have been transformed into animated, interactive computer models that will be featured in the exhibition, offering visitors a better sense of how Matisse worked from one sculpture to another in a series and how he approached the casting of his sculptures in bronze. The project reflects active research on sculpture conservation and the technical aspects of sculpture at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Exhibition Organization and Tour

Matisse: Painter as Sculptor is co-organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Following its Dallas presentation, the exhibition will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (June 9–September 16, 2007) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (October 28, 2007–February 3, 2008). The exhibition is curated by Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art; Dr. Steven Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center; and Jay Fisher, Baltimore Museum of Art Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs; with the assistance of Dr. Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art; Jed Morse, Assistant Curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center; and Dr. Oliver Shell, Baltimore Museum of Art Assistant Curator of European Painting & Sculpture and a Kress Foundation Fellow.

Catalogue

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, co-produced with Yale University Press, will accompany the exhibition. The catalogue will encompass major new scholarship through a series of essays that offer new and exciting insights into Matisse’s sculptural work. Dr. Nash will discuss Matisse patronage and the reception of his sculpture in America. Dr. Kosinski will probe the art-historical context of Matisse’s sculpture in dialogue with tradition and the avant-garde. Dr. Shell will examine the artist’s ideas about the viewing of his sculpture, as revealed by his deliberate placement of sculpture in exhibitions. Dr. Shell and Ann Boulton, Baltimore Museum of Art Objects Conservator, will summarize technical studies undertaken while they held a joint fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Mr. Fisher will explore the use of drawing in the evolution of Matisse’s sculptural ideas.

Image: Henri Matisse, Large Seated Nude, 1922–1929 (cast 1930), bronze, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, © 2006 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS)