The next big display to grace the massive confines of the Tate Modern will be the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition, which is set to open in the next few weeks, bringing a new perspective to the work of the French artist. Focusing on his final movement into the realms of cut out colour explotions, it will be a vibrant and enthralling display of modern art, bringing the gallery back to the routes of its own purpose.
Opening on the 17th April 2014, and running through until the 7th September 2014, The Cut-Outs exhibition will showcase 120 pieces created by Matisse between 1936 and 1954. It’s a period in which Matisse had entered what we now consider to be retirement, aged between 66 up until his death at the age of 84, but his career didn’t stop, it just found new ways of expression.
The story of the exhibition traces the artist’s last, significant body of work, produced when ill health prevented him from continuing his work in paintings. However, instead of letting that be the end of his production, he instead pioneered a whole new medium for his talent, turning to the craft of the scissors with the same deft touch as he had shown previously with the brush.
His cut-outs worked with vividly colourful painted paper to form the basis for an impressive combination of both minimalism and an almost Gaudi-like love of startling spectrum. Though the process was originally designed to be an easy way of producing early drafts of his commissions, it went on to become of his most iconic forms of creative output.
As with all famous artists, the many works of Henri Matisse have spread far and wide, so it is an impressive feat for the Tate Modern to bring so many of them from this era in his life together for us all to see. For example, the exhibition will be the first unification of the Tate’s own The Snail (1953) with its sister work Memory of Oceania (1953) and Large Composition with Masks (1953), since their creation, despite the implication from photographs of Matisse’s studio which indicate that they were created to be shown together.
Tickets for the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition are £18.00 (£16.30 without donation) for adults and £16.00 (£14.50 without donation) for concessions, although there’s apparently an additional booking fee of £1.75 (£2 via telephone) per transaction. On the upside, if you’re a particularly bright kid, entrance is free for under 12s with up to four sub twelve year olds per parent or guardian.
Following its time at the Tate Modern, The Cut-Outs exhibition will go on to take up residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
