The new immersive program at Les Baux-de-Provence doesn't follow Matisse's chronology but rather his colors, from the blue of the Cut-Out Nudes to the black of the stained-glass windows of Vence, starting October 9, 2026, with a short program dedicated to Frida Kahlo.

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We enter the blue. It's his color, the one that Henri Matisse cuts with scissors from gouache-painted paper to create the Blue Nudes, and on the limestone walls of the Carrières des Lumières, it covers everything. Then it evaporates, and in its place shimmer the pure touches of Luxe, Calme et Volupté, a 1904 beach scene where Matisse has just understood what Mediterranean light allows: to do without drawing.

Green arrives like a slap in the face. Autumn 1905, Woman with a Hat caused a sensation at the Salon; a critic called the room full of wild beasts, and shadows vanished from the paintings. The orange came from Algeria and Morocco, where, he said, the revelation had come to him. The red, on the other hand, engulfed the room: in The Red Studio, the walls, the furniture, and the canvases dissolved into a single saturated Venetian hue, and one no longer visited a studio, one floated within it. Elsewhere, colors flicker on and off along the bodies in The Dance, forming and dissolving, and one finally sees what they do to one another. Then the yellow of the large paper cutouts from the end, The Sheaf, The Snail, when illness prevented him from standing and he drew with scissors. And finally, black: the stained-glass windows of the Vence chapel, which he considered his masterpiece.

Matisse spent his life striving to transform color into light. In a limestone quarry fifteen meters high, he achieved this. The program, produced by Culturespaces, is followed in the same showing by a short program, Frida Kahlo, in the Heart of the City.

To plan your trip, see our top regional exhibitions and our regional exhibitions.

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Quarries of Light
From October 9, 2026
Route de Maillane, 13520 Les Baux-de-Provence
Opening hours and prices on the online ticket office

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