MiróMatisse. Beyond images

Each of them gave an unexpected answer: when Louis Aragon asked Henri Matisse about contemporary artists and which one, apart from Picasso, was a "true painter", the master pronounced Bonnard’s name before adding: "Miró... yes Miró... Because he can represent anything on his canvas... But if, at a certain point, he has placed a red spot, you can be sure that it was there, and not elsewhere, that it was supposed to be... Take it away, the painting falls. [1]".
The pianist Alain Planès asked Miró the same question: "One day I asked Joan: ’But who do you think was the greatest painter of the century? Apart from him, of course. And he replied: ’Henri Matisse’. It’s true that I thought he was going to say Picasso. He didn’t explain anything because he wasn’t expansive [2]" Joan Miró developed this idea a little further in a handwritten note at the end of his life, defining the Trinity of twentieth-century painters: "Picasso is a god. Matisse, a great painter. Miró a great spirit. A life-giving spirit that is everywhere [3]", in all simplicity.

1. Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Gourds, 1915-1916
Oil on canvas - 65.1 x 80.9 cm
New York, The Museum of Modern Art
Photo: MoMA
© Succession Henri Matisse

See the image in its page

2. Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Still Life II (The Carbide Lamp), 1922-1923
Oil on canvas - 38.1 x 45.7 cm
New York, The Museum of Modern Art
Photo: MoMA
© Successió Miró/ADAGP, Paris, 2024

See the image in its page

Miró-Matisse: it is hard to see what links these two artists separated by twenty-five years, one a leader of Fauvism, a painter of the "happiness of living", the author of deliberately decorative works, the creator of "harmonies" of colour, and the other a figure of Surrealism, a dreamlike painter of chaotic works and discordant colours.
However, the Musée Matisse in Nice is offering an original and convincing confrontation (ill. 1 to 5). We would like to thank Aymeric Jeudy, director of the Musée Matisse,…