In echo to the United Nations Ocean Conference that the city of Nice will host in June, the Biennale of Arts and the Ocean presents a series of artistic projects around the theme "The Sea Around Us". On this occasion, the Matisse Museum is launching Matisse Mediterranean(s), an exhibition that highlights the aesthetic, emotional, and almost spiritual relationship that Henri Matisse formed throughout his life with the Mediterranean.
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The Mediterranean, Matisse's Radiant Muse
For Matisse, painting the Mediterranean was not just about depicting a landscape; it was also about embracing a way of being, feeling, and breathing on our Earth. The exhibition offers a geographic and poetic approach to the artist's relationship with this diverse marine space. It begins with Matisse's early Mediterranean discoveries – Corsica, Collioure, Tangier – which lay the foundations of his aesthetic. These foundational stays feed a free, colorful painting style that breaks away from academic norms.
Then comes Nice, truly the artist's “home port” since 1917. An entire room is dedicated to this period: nudes at the window, interiors bathed in light, where the blue of the sea can be both sensed and reflected. It also reveals how the light of the Mediterranean...te;e modifies the very way of painting: the line becomes more supple, the color bolder, and sometimes the drawing alone is enough to evoke the essence.
Immersive Scenography and Rare Works
Thought of as a journey, the exhibition embraces the contours of an emotional map: Algeria, Italy, Morocco, Greece… At each stop, emblematic works, as well as pieces rarely shown in France, like some sketchbooks or photographs taken by Matisse himself. Exceptional loans from MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Centre Pompidou engage in a dialogue with the museum’s permanent collections.
La Villa bleue à Nice, Henri Matisse.
A Vibrant Tribute
By highlighting the many Mediterraneans of Matisse, the exhibition also emphasizes the bridges between cultures and shores. It pays tribute to a sea not as a border, but as a place of passage, of blending, of inspiration. This is a particularly fresh and relevant angle, especially now when climate, migration, and political issues are reshaping our relationship with the oceans.
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Matisse Mediterranean(s)
Matisse Museum
164, avenue des Arènes-de-Cimiez – Nice
From May 7 to September 8, 2025
Price: 10€, free for children and students
More info and reservations
