1905 -1914 · tawny port and black gate

In Collioure, color first frees the port and the olive trees; nine years later, an almost black French window reduces the same place to a silent threshold.

Matisse arrived in Collioure during the summer of 1905 and worked there with André Derain. Mediterranean light, the port, the boats and the hills lead them to use separate, intense and non-naturalistic colors. With the window open, Collioure transforms the view from a room into interlocking pink, green, blue and purple bands; the sea hardly recedes, while the rim pots connect interior and exterior. Oliviers in Collioure and Les Toits de Collioure give the trunks, houses and relief touches whose direction counts as much as the pattern. In 1914, Porte-fenêtre in Collioure reversed this exuberance: three vertical bands frame a center dark, long interpreted as an interrupted or covered view. The same site thus accompanies two opposing moments, the birth of Fauvism and experimentation on the threshold of abstraction. The "Matisse à Collioure" selection notably compares Open Window, Collioure and Oliviers à Collioure. His reading favors figures.

Collioure does not offer a unique style to Matisse: its light first teaches him brilliance, then its architecture allows him to face black.