Matisse in Morocco
A Journey of Light and Color
-
- $20.99
-
- $20.99
Publisher Description
The remarkable and little-known story of the two groundbreaking winters that Henri Matisse spent painting in Morocco, a fertile period that transformed his art and marked his work until the very end.
In winter of 1912, Henri Matisse—forty-two, nearing mid-career, and yet to find lasting critical acceptance, public admiration, or financial security since exploding to the forefront of the avant-garde in 1905 with his iconoclastic Fauve paintings—was struggling. Once the vanguard leader, the Parisian avant-garde now considered him passé. His important early collectors, including Gertrude and Leo Stein, had stopped buying his work and were fully championing Picasso, and he had exhibited little in the last few years. In the face of Cubism that was now dominating the art scene, Matisse needed to get away from Paris in order to advance his distinctive artistic vision.
Almost on a whim, he went to Tangier. Matisse had already been profoundly inspired by Islamic art, and was primed for his arrival in the Moroccan city where such art was integrated into everyday life. Despite the challenges of rain, insomnia, depression, and finding models, the sojourn was such a success he returned the following winter, which would lead to even greater artistic triumph.
Matisse in Morocco tells the story of the artist's groundbreaking time in Tangier and how it altered Matisse’s development as a painter and indelibly marked his work for the next four decades. Through Koehler's research and travel, we experience Matisse's time in Tangier, the paintings and their subjects, his relationships with his wife Amélie and his two important collectiors, and then come to understand the impact Morocco—its light, colors, culture, and artistic traditions—had on his art. From Landscape Viewed From a Window, to Zorah on the Terrace, from Kasbah Gate to the dream-like tableau Moroccan Café, these works from Morocco are now recognized as some of the most significant and dazzling of Matisse’s illustrious career.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this haphazard study, Morocco author Koehler wraps multiple historical narratives around two trips that French painter Henri Matisse (1869–1954) took to Morocco. Matisse, a prominent member of the fauvist movement, was at a reputational low point in 1912, as the avant-garde community turned to cubism and Picasso. Seeking a new direction and to fulfill outstanding commissions, he left Paris for Tangier. The choice initially seemed disastrous, as bad weather kept him inside and Islamic prohibitions against images of living creatures made finding models difficult. He returned to France with a crop of new paintings later that year, but chose to exhibit none, then went back to Tangier, finding new subjects and incorporating Islamic motifs into his work. Woven into the narrative are tangents on Moroccan history; details of the French painter Eugène Delacroix's 1832 trip to Morocco; profiles of Matisse's primary collectors; and an account of the 1990–1991 exhibition of Matisse's Morocco paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Matisse's story doesn't conform to the typical "blocked artist travels to a foreign land and finds his way" narrative, and Koehler's sensitivity to Orientalist tropes means he doesn't force such an interpretation. However, he struggles to find a unifying story to tell amid all the tangents, which—while individually interesting—cause the book, before long, to collapse under its own weight. It's a mixed bag.
