L’ultimo Matisse – Morfologie di carta

Hosted from 28 February to 28 June at the Museo Storico della Fanteria, L’Ultimo Matisse – Morfologie di carta (The Last Matisse – Paper Morphologies) presents the French artist's last vibrant creative period, one of the most intense and innovative of his career.

The exhibition, curated by Vittoria Mainoldi, unfolds through four sections featuring over one hundred works: from the famous coloured papers “papiers découpés” and the collaboration with Verve magazine to illustrated works, the iconic Jazz series, and drawings. 

This unmissable exhibition not only offers an insight into his entire body of work, but also reveals Matisse's graphic work as an essential element that, contextualised, reveals the artistic moment of the post-war period, in which illustration, publishing and printing established themselves as spaces for experimentation and research for many artists of the time.

After the First World War, Matisse moved beyond the Fauvism and began a long period of experimentation: painting gradually gave way to a new expressive language, including drawing, graphic art, set design, theatre costumes, and papier découpés. His rich production of books and works on paper highlights an artist who cannot be labelled as belonging to a single movement and demonstrates a profound sensitivity to line and colour, with figures that lack rigid contours but seem to emerge from an internal tension, lines that appear spontaneous but are in fact carefully considered, and white as an integral part of the composition. As in the gouaches découpées, the artist recognises equilibrium and stops.

During the period when Matisse was confined to a wheelchair due to his illness, he painted in gouache on large sheets of paper, which he cut out and pasted together to create evocative, colourful compositions: the famous cut-outs, made with simple materials and elementary techniques, which give life to unique and complex works.

Photo: Le Cirque