iMUDEC Museo delle CultureTortona / Porta Genova
Matisse: The World in a Room
About 100 works tracing how African, Islamic, Russian, Pacific and Chinese art reshaped Henri Matisse, with objects and fabrics from his own collection.
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After seeing medieval icons in Moscow in 1911, Matisse said he had spent ten years looking for something Russian painters had already found in the 14th century. This show takes him at his word: about 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures, hung beside the kinds of objects that taught him.
Eight sections run from African sculpture and Russian icons through Islamic carpets, Chinese lacquer and his 1930 trip to Tahiti, and end on the designs for the chapel in Vence. You walk past Kuba cloth from Congo, a tapa from Wallis and Futuna and a black lacquered Chinese panel, the things that surrounded him at work and that he used as models. Loans come from Philadelphia, MoMA, the Orangerie and Orsay.
Go for the pairings rather than a greatest-hits run; the curators use them to reopen primitivism and orientalism. Tickets are €16 (€14 reduced, free under 6) on Vivaticket, with fixed or open dates. Thursdays run to 22:30, Mondays open at 14:30, and last entry is an hour before closing.
Editor's pick
Matisse's 1909 bronze La Serpentine stands beside the royal Bamana pair from Mali it borrows from. Around it, the Kuba cloth, tapa and Chinese lacquer he kept in the studio. Come for the pairings, not a greatest-hits retrospective.
Look for
La Serpentine and the Bamana royal pair
Look for Matisse's 1909 bronze nude from the Musée d'Orsay shown with a pair of royal Bamana sculptures from Mali, the African anatomy it borrows from.
The studio objects
Look for the Kuba textiles from Congo, the tapa cloth from Wallis and Futuna and the large black lacquered Chinese wooden panel that Matisse kept around him and photographed as models.
The Océanie diptych
Look for the two monumental panels, Océanie, le ciel and Océanie, la mer, where his memory of the 1930 Tahiti trip turns into birds, sea plants and lagoon shapes.
Femme à la gandoura bleue
Look for his last painting, a woman in a blue North African robe, lent by the Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, his birthplace.
Matisse's own Morocco photographs
Look for the period photographs, including shots Matisse took himself in Morocco that have never been published.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want a straight Matisse retrospective: much of the show is African, Islamic, Chinese and Pacific objects.
Free in the same building
- Global Milan. The World Seen from HereFree permanent display in three halls: Potosí silver and the Settala collection, Asian trade and chinoiserie, and Italy's colonial encounters with Africa.
- The Collections: MUDEC StoreroomsGround-floor visitable storerooms holding the civic collections from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, arranged by region. Visits by appointment.
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
8
- Matisse: The World in a RoomCourtesy of MUDEC Museo delle Culture
- Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025: Twenty Years of Haute CoutureCourtesy of Armani/Silos
- Under Milano: Imaginary mapsCourtesy of Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci
- Artemisia Gentileschi. AnnunciazioneCourtesy of Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini
- MUDEC Museo delle CultureDamianoMartinoPhoto / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Armani/SilosAnna Bombińska / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da VinciMuseo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria MartiniTrotter Christie / Wikimedia Commons, CC0