Matisse — 1941 — 1954 — Les Galeries nationales du Grand Palais — Exhibition — Slash Paris

In 5 months: March 24 → July 26, 2026

Co-produced by the Centre Pompidou and the GrandPalaisRmn, the exhibition Matisse. 1941–1954 sheds light on the artist’s final years of creation, from 1941 to 1954, through a presentation of unprecedented scope in France. It reveals the multidisciplinary nature of his practice during this period while bringing together an exceptional ensemble of cut-out gouaches. The exhibition features paintings, drawings, cut-outs, illustrated books, textiles, and stained glass—each a variation of this renewed creative impulse. Never before had Matisse been so prolific in the variety of techniques and media he employed.

At nearly eighty years old, Henri Matisse reinvented himself through the medium of the cut-out gouache, which emerged as an autonomous and sovereign artistic language, capable of reaching the universal through its simplicity. Adapted both to reproduction and to the demands of monumental commissions, this technique lent itself to multiple applications and allowed him to fully express the decorative dimension of his art. The exhibition conveys this profound transformation, which imbues everything he touched with breadth and vitality, from the most modest works, seemingly just released from the direct cut of his scissors into color, to the vast and elaborate compositions.

The exhibition demonstrates that, far from having “abandoned painting, which was supposedly supplanted by the cut-outs,” as is often mistakenly claimed, painting remained at the heart of his practice—ever more expansive in space and ever more generous in color.

The exhibition brings together more than 230 works from the rich holdings of the Centre Pompidou, as well as from private collections and national and international institutions. It includes major loans rarely or never before seen in France (from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, MoMA, The Met, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Barnes Foundation, and the Fondation Beyeler, among others). The exhibition thus reunites the essential ensembles of this period: the majestic and final Interiors of Vence series (1947–1948); the artist’s book Jazz, one of the summits of the genre, presented alongside its maquette held in the collection of the Musée national d’art moderne—a radically modern, musically inspired work; the Themes and Variations series and the brush-and-ink drawings; the principal elements of the Chapelle de Vence program; the monumental panels The Sheaf (La Gerbe) and Acanthuses (Les Acanthes); and, as a crowning moment—exceptionally brought together—the great cut-out figures such as The Sorrows of the King (La Tristesse du roi), Zulma, Creole Dancer (La Danseuse créole), and the Blue Nudes series.

This final creative period for Matisse is characterized by an ever-deeper symbiosis between the space of the studio and that of the work itself.

The exhibition seeks to re-create this ever-changing in situ environment, offering visitors access to Matisse’s own “garden” through a spatial experience that expands from room to room.

Curator: Claudine Grammont — Department of Graphic Arts, Musée national d’art moderne — Centre Pompidou