21/05/2023
"Where I got the color red—to be sure, I just don't know," Henri Matisse once remarked. "I find that all these things…only become what they are to me when I see them together with the color red."
“The Red Studio” features a small retrospective of Matisse's recent painting, sculpture, and ceramics, displayed in his studio in 1911. The artist’s studio wasn’t actually red, but he liked the way the color brought everything together.
Notice how he painted his artworks differently from the other objects, like the table, dresser, and clock. The artworks appear in color and in detail, while the room's architecture and furnishings are indicated only by negative gaps in the red surface.
🟥 New on view! See “The Red Studio” in our fifth-floor galleries → mo.ma/redstudio
🎧 Explore this work at the Museum or at home. Download the free app to your mobile device and select MoMA’s guide to listen to curator Ann Temkin share how this artwork evolved as was painting it → mo.ma/bloomberg-connects
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Henri Matisse. “The Red Studio.” Issy-les-Moulineaux, fall 1911. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2023 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York