Paris,
It dates from 1911 and is one of the fundamental works in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since this center acquired it in 1949: The Red Atelier Matisse and his genesis are the focus of one of the two major exhibitions (along with that of Ellsworth Kelly) that the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is hosting this summer, in collaboration with the aforementioned MoMA and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
It contains this composition, which represents the French artist’s own studio, a set of paintings, sculptures, furniture and decorative objects that were then found in that workshop and which have also been brought together for this exhibition, which marks the first time that pieces from the Fauvist’s studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the Hauts-de-Seine, have left their mark. Alongside these compositions, we will see other related works (paintings and drawings) and archive material.
At 110 years old, The Red Atelier It has become a milestone in the long tradition of representations of artist’s studios, an object of study for any painter willing to be inspired by his own, and also a fundamental work within the framework of the legacy of this author due to his radical decision to saturate the surface of his canvas with a layer of red, a procedure that he would take up again seven years later in his Harmony in redin the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and which we know also seduced Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly himself. Despite its popularity, however, this room still holds secrets.
The core of the exhibition is made up of The Red Atelier along with half a dozen paintings, three sculptures and a piece of pottery that, as we mentioned, appear reflected here and that have survived the test of time (not in all cases). Dated between 1898 and 1911, these are paintings that will be familiar to those who are familiar with Matisse’s work, such as The young sailor (II) (1906), which is exhibited in France for the first time in thirty years; of some less famous ones, such as Corsica, The Old Mill (1898); and pieces whose final location has only recently been discovered. Three of the paintings are part of the Danish SMK collection –Bathers (1907), The Luxury (II) (1907-1908) and Naked with a white handkerchief (1909)-, while the ceramic plaque, dated 1907, also comes from MoMA.
The set is completed by compositions that can be linked, as we said, to Atelier: The Blue Window (1913) from MoMA and The Big Red Interior (1948) from the MNAM/Centre Pompidou, for helping to structure the history of this canvas, the complex path from its creation to its incorporation into the collection of the New York museum, which is also attested to by letters and photographs, many of them published or exhibited for the first time, and a video that analyses recent discoveries about the painting-making process based on conservation science.

We will review part of that history: The Red Atelier It was made as part of a commission for a group of works from Matisse by Sergei Shchukin, a Russian textile magnate, one of his earliest and most loyal patrons – by then the architect of Luxury, calm and voluptuousness He was forty years old, a controversial figure, and his clientele was small but eager. The work immediately preceding this one, which was depicted by the same workshop in pink, was received by Shchukin with enthusiasm, but this was not the case with this new and innovative still life, which he refused to acquire, as did other collectors in London, New York, Chicago, Boston and Düsseldorf. For sixteen years the work remained in its author’s hands, during which time it was exhibited at the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London in 1912 and in 1913 at the Armory Shows in New York, Chicago and Boston.
The piece was finally acquired in 1927 by David Tennant, founder of the Gargoyle Club in London, a closed organisation that included both artists and aristocrats. It was there that it hung The Atelier until the early 1940s; shortly afterwards it was bought by Georges Keller, director of the Bignou Gallery in New York, its last owner before MoMA. In the museum the piece gained, we might say, a second life, admired by all the artists and the interested public: its enormous novelty was suddenly rediscovered. And it was there that it received its present title, from the hands of Alfred H. Barr.
Matisse himself would explain the reasons for this seduction in those years: what made this 1911 composition unique was its “abstraction”, derived from the disturbing prevalence of the colour red and possible despite the precise representation of the furniture, paintings and objects that he had nearby at that time in Issy-les-Moulineaux, where he arrived escaping from the precariousness of Paris. Aware of its importance, the artist returned to this theme later: the aforementioned painting stands out in this regard. Big red interior from 1948, which entered the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1950 after having been exhibited in New York by his son Pierre in February 1949. It can also be seen at the Fondation Vuitton and its dialogue with the first workshop invites us to see how, in a period of four decades and at a time when the artist’s creations were undergoing profound changes, that pioneering composition continued to offer him readings; it could be, as Proust said, one of those types of images that You can’t appreciate them when you’re too close to them.It represented a kind of conjunction between reality and pictorial space that would reach its fullness in its architectural translation, in the decoration for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence.
Prior to its French presentation, this exhibition was on view in 2022 and 2023 in New York and Copenhagen.

“Matisse. “L’atelier rouge”
LOUIS VUITTON FOUNDATION
8 Mahatma Gandhi Avenue
Paris
From May 4 to September 9, 2024