Matisse as Printmaker

This comprehensive exhibition, featuring more than 100 of Matisse’s prints created between 1900 and 1951, is drawn from two extraordinary collections of works by Henri Matisse—the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation and The Baltimore Museum of Art. Every printmaking medium Matisse used is represented: etchings, monotypes, aquatints, lithographs, and linocuts (all in black and white) as well as his two color prints. Several of his best illustrated books, such as the Poésies de Stephane Mallarmé (1932), Pasiphaë (1944), and Jazz (1947), demonstrate the artist’s brilliant innovations in arranging printed images to control the experience of serial imagery. A selection of painting and sculpture from the BMA's Cone Collection illustrate the integration of Matisse's use of different mediums.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by BMA Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs Jay Fisher that explores Matisse’s use of printmaking throughout his career. It also reprints a seminal essay by curator William Lieberman from 1956, the first significant study of Matisse’s prints.