NEW YORK.- More than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and original prints by some of the most prominent artists of the 20th century have been donated by the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – by such modern art icons as Henri Matisse, Balthus, Chagall, Derain, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miró, and Tanguy, as well as several pivotal but lesser-known artists – were collected by the New York art dealer Pierre Matisse (1900-1989).
The Foundation’s gift represents one of the largest additions to the modern art collection of the Metropolitan Museum. It greatly strengthens the Museum’s holdings of works by Henri Matisse and adds to the collection Surrealist works by Leonora Carrington, Wifredo Lam, and René Magritte, who were not previously represented.
Pierre Matisse was the younger son of the French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954). He and Maria-Gaetana von Spreti (1943-2001) were married in 1974, and in 1995 Mrs. Matisse established the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation to implement her own and her late husband’s philanthropic interests. Mrs. Matisse died in April 2001.
These gifts to the Metropolitan Museum – called the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection – will be shown at the Museum in 2004. The exhibition will be accompanied by a Bulletin featuring highlights from the collection, and later, the Museum will publish a complete catalogue of the collection.
In announcing the gift, Metropolitan Museum Director Philippe de Montebello said: "Pierre Matisse was well known as a brilliant dealer in art, who showed several now-legendary artists of the early 20th century for the first time in New York and who also introduced several post-World War II artists to collectors and museums in the United States. This generous gift from the Foundation enhances the modern art collection of the Metropolitan enormously."
William S. Lieberman, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Chairman of Modern Art at the Metropolitan, added: "I met Pierre Matisse in 1946, and we first worked together in 1957 when I began to organize a Joan Miró retrospective for the Museum of Modern Art. An eminent and persuasive purveyor of modern and tribal art, what Pierre collected was what he preferred to keep for himself for everyday enjoyment. This very personal selection was handsomely displayed in his townhouse on East 64th Street. Also, by inheritance, he received paintings, bronzes, drawings, and prints by his father. Pierre’s favorite modern artists were Balthus, Derain, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miró, and Tanguy, and with each of them he developed close friendships. Also, for many years, both in Paris and New York, he supported the American painter Loren MacIver, who became a close friend of Gaetana.
"In 1990, in lieu of taxes, Pierre’s estate’s donation to the national Musée de l’Art Moderne in Paris featured: capital examples by the artists he represented, including his own portrait by Dubuffet; outstanding works by Matisse; paintings by Miró and Rouault; and a Cézanne portrait previously collected by his father.
"In 2003, the Foundation’s gift to the Metropolitan is similarly important. Our representation of painters of the School of Paris is greatly enhanced, and Surrealist paintings by Leonora Carrington, Wifredo Lam, and René Magritte enter the Museum’s collection for the first time. The Foundation’s gift also splendidly complements three other collections recently received: the Florene M. Schoenborn bequest (in 1995); the Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls gift (in 1997); and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman bequest (in 1998)."
When Pierre Matisse sailed to New York from his native France in 1924, he had set aside painting, which he had studied with André Derain, for the business of selling art. After two early exhibitions, working with other dealers, he opened his own Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1931 in the Fuller Building on East 57th Street. The gallery remained in that location for the next 58 years. The modern art world in New York was still young, and Pierre Matisse made his mark by showing work by recently established European artists such as Bonnard, Chagall, de Chirico, Derain, Picasso, and Rouault. He also championed younger artists such as Joan Miró and Balthus, and soon forged close relationships with them and with other artists including Alberto Giacometti and Yves Tanguy. Over the decades, he expanded his focus to represent painters from Latin America (Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam), sculptors from England (Reg Butler and Raymond Mason), and artists from Spain (Manolo Millares, Manuel Rivera, and Antonio Saura) and from the United States (Alexander Calder, Loren MacIver, Theodore Roszak, and Joan Mitchell and her Canadian husband, the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle). With the exception of Calder, de Chirico, Roszak, and Rouault, these artists are represented in the Foundation’s gift.
Nearly 50 works by Henri Matisse in various media – dating from 1904, when the artist was 35, through 1952, when he was 83 – include four paintings, sculpture, a dozen drawings, and 30 rare etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. The four paintings are: the intensely colored, pre-Fauve Chapel of Saint Anne, St. Tropez (1904); a shimmering still life of Lilacs (1914); a 1916 portrait of Henri Matisse’s daughter Marguerite; and a more elegantly posed portrait of her painted two years later. Especially notable among the drawings are Matisse’s portraits of the Russian art collector Sergei I. Shchukin (1912) and the violinist Eva Mudocci (1915), and a late and very large drawing, Tree (1951).
Paintings in the donation by other artists include Balthus’ 1938 portrait of Pierre Matisse, a Leonora Carrington self-portrait (1936), Marc Chagall’s Bride with a Fan (1911), Paul Delvaux’s Train Station at Night (1959), André Derain’s The Black Feather Boa (ca. 1935), Wifredo Lam’s Female Deity (1942), René Magritte’s The Eternal Truth (1948), and an early work by Yves Tanguy entitled A Decisive Moment (1926). Alberto Giacometti is represented by a rare still-life painting, The Apple (1937), and by a drawing, Studies of Diego (1962), while works by Joan Miró include the large canvas Photo: This is the color of my dreams, a painted and witty reaction to Surrealist use of the photo image (1925).
In 1947 the Pierre Matisse Gallery introduced Jean Dubuffet to the United States. The Foundation’s gifts include one painting, two collages, a drawing, and a pair of watercolors by Dubuffet.
Additional works on paper include drawings by Balthus, Bonnard, Butler, Carrington, Derain, Lam, Matta, Rouan, Setsuko, and Zao Wou-ki, as well as prints by Dubuffet and Miró. Pierre Matisse also organized exhibitions of Precolumbian and African tribal art, and the Foundation’s donation includes an outstanding male reliquary figure from Gabon.
Gifts by Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse to the Metropolitan Museum during their lifetimes began in 1984 and include a drawing by Matisse, a painting by Miró, a painting by Joan Mitchell, and nine paintings by Loren MacIver. In 2001, Balthus’ portrait of Pierre Matisse was featured in an installation commemorating that artist in the Museum’s Robert Lehman Wing. This was the first showing of the portrait, lost for many years but recovered by Maria-Gaetana Matisse.