Paris - Summer Exhibition 2026 - #5 - Matisse, last revolution at the Grand Palais

At the end of his life, Henri Matisse could have been content with his status as a giant of modernity. Instead, he chose to put everything back on the line. The exhibition Matisse, 1941-1954, presented at the Grand Palais, focuses on this last period, undoubtedly the most surprising of his career: that of an artist physically diminished, but with a freedom intact, if not more acute than ever.

We know Matisse as the great painter of color, the leader of Fauvism, the man behind La Danse and Luxe, calme et volupté. But the 1940s and 1950s tell a different story: a creator who, faced with illness, reinvented his tools, his formats and his very way of thinking about the image. Operated on in 1941 and often bedridden afterwards, Matisse spoke of his "second life". There's nothing rhetorical about the term. On the contrary, it marks a real turning point: the painter stopped confronting the canvas as before and invented another form of conquest, lighter in appearance, yet entirely radical.

For the occasion, the Grand Palais brings together over 300 works, including the famous papiers découpés, the serial drawings of Thèmes et variations, the preparatory compositions for the chapelle de Vence and the Jazz plates. This corpus allows us to follow Matisse at work, attentive to the slightest shift of a line, the slightest shock of a color, as if seeking to reduce painting to its purest energy. Far from a simple farewell, these years appear as a summit of invention.

Born in Cateau-Cambrésis in 1869, Matisse established himself early on as a major figure of the avant-garde. After studying law and a late revelation to painting, he entered the history of art with Fauvism, before exploring all possible avenues of modernity for over forty years. This exhibition reminds us that his final period was not a coda, but a revolution in the form of a purification.

Practical info

From March 24 to July 26, 2026,

° Grand Palais, 17 avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris 8e.