Enjoy two full days of member-only access to Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color and see the exhibition before it opens to the public.
Be sure to keep your member card handy to scan into the galleries during this exclusive preview.
In the early 1940s, decades into his artistic career, Henri Matisse (1869–1954) turned his focus to a new medium: cut paper.
He had become bedridden and unable to paint following an excruciating abdominal surgery, and cut paper allowed him to continue to create in his relatively sedentary state. Encouraged by his friend, the book publisher Tériade (the pseudonym of Stratis Eleftheriades), Matisse furthered his exploration of this new technique. He mined his memories of Parisian music halls, the circus, trips to Tahiti, folktales, and mythology, and produced a series of 20 cut-paper maquettes.
This exhibition marks the first time Matisse’s Jazz will be shown in its entirety since the Art Institute acquired it in 1948. One of the most important livres d’artiste (artist books) of the 20th century, Jazz joins over 50 works from the museum’s renowned collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, illustrated books, and textiles to showcase the famed artist’s commitment across his 50-year career to continual innovation and the expressive power of color and line.
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