INCREASING ABSTRACTION1914–1917
An exceptional witness to the emergence of Cubism in 1908, Matisse hosted members of the Parisian avant-garde who had remained in the capital during the war at his home near Paris. He spent August 1914 in Collioure, where he likely completed only a single painting, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure [French Window at Collioure]. The black plane at its centre, which binds and unifies the composition, overlays an earlier depiction of an open balcony. This unfinished painting, which Matisse kept throughout his life, marks the first step towards “black light”.
This radical approach, a search for lines of force and planes of colour, finds a formal echo in work by František Kupka, whose series of Plans verticaux [Vertical Planes] emerge from a decomposition into coloured planes, a juxtaposition of vertical bands that recall the Cubist grid and are linked to Kupka’s transition to abstract art. Matisse’s Tête blanche et rose [White and Pink Head]—a portrait of his daughter Marguerite on display in the exhibition—hints at a superimposed Cubist orthogonal grid yet retains the mystery of a style that resists categorisation.
