1911, 42 route de Clamart. In his studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Henri Matisse sees red! In full preparation of his Symphonic Interiors for the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin, the artist covered one of his four canvases with a uniform scarlet color, a haunting Venetian red tending towards ocher, ignoring of reality and the gray walls that surround it. It is impossible to say with certainty whether the painter is celebrating here with fanfare the advent of the new century or the end of the Belle Époque which is coming. By his own admission, Matisse is incapable of explaining his gesture, not even to his patron who simply declines the painting: “I don't understand exactly why I painted it that way.” With L'Atelier rouge, the artist nevertheless created a revolutionary work and unknowingly introduced monochrome into the vocabulary of modern art. A shame when we know that the painting, shunned by buyers and remained in the hands of Matisse for sixteen long years, finally found a buyer in 1927 to decorate the ballroom of a London nightclub!

Seduced by this extraordinary destiny, the Louis Vuitton Foundation presents this global exhibition which traces the unusual journey of this masterpiece of modern art. A few months after MoMA and the National Museum of Art of Denmark, it is therefore the turn of the Parisian institution to put together the puzzle to solve the mystery of the red room and to welcome the six paintings, the three sculptures and ceramics reproduced identically in the Atelier. The opportunity to discover or rediscover real treasures, such as the tawny portrait of Young Sailor II which had not been exhibited in France for more than 30 years, or to admire this little-known landscape with its inspirations impressionists Corsica, the old mill placed almost carelessly on the ground in the original work. Between the alluring Nude with a white scarf and the mythical group of Bathers, the exhibition pushes the reconstruction to its climax by pointing out here and there invisible details, imperceptible correspondences , daring to create a parallel with later compositions such as the Blue Window or the Large Red Interior. More than a studio view, the work actually sounds like a portrait of his life as an artist, a purple-colored mise en abyme to resituate the imaginary space of a master of modern art.{26 }
Did you know?
In art, the beginnings of the precursors are difficult. Matisse, invited to the first major contemporary art fair in the USA, quickly understood this. Provoking mockery and hostilities, none of his works were sold in the three American cities where they were exhibited. Worse, Chicago art students gathered to publicly burn reproductions of his paintings.

Henri Matisse, L'Atelier rouge, 1911{42 }
Artist credit: © Succession H. Matisse

Photo credit: © Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence