1869 -1954 · From Dance I to Piano Lesson

Discover Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art, where La Danse I, Les Marocains and La Lesson de piano retrace the transition from the wild momentum to a radical construction of space.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York preserves several works that allow us to understand Matisse's most daring turns. Dance I, a study painted in 1909 before the version commissioned by Sergei Shchukin, shows five bodies drawn into a circle on the blue of the sky and the green of the earth. The painting keeps the freshness of a first thought, but already contains one of the great symbols of modern art. A few years later, the travels to Morocco nourish Les Marocains, a vast composition completed in 1916 where dome, figures, melons and vegetation are distributed in almost abstract areas. The same year, The Piano Lesson transformed a family scene into architecture tense. Young Pierre Matisse sits in front of the keyboard; a triangular window, a sculpture and a fragment of decor order the conflict between discipline, music and color. Goldfish and palette directly connects workshop, painter's tool and aquatic motif, while The Yellow Curtain condenses the interior into a luminous surface. These works reveal a Matisse less exclusively associated with decorative joy: the color can be sober, the space difficult, the black active and the simplification charged with intellectual tension. The selection "Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art" notably compares The Piano Lesson and The Moroccans. Its reading favors details.

At MoMA, the circle of La Danse and the green triangle of La Lesson de piano show the same force: Matisse simplifies until each form is made an essential decision.