.Matisse
Henri Matisse becomes a friend of the Maeght family based in Vence who hastily left Cannes, following the arrest of Jean Moulin, a friend of Aimé.
Marguerite quite naturally becomes Matisse's model. According to his method of creation, he draws, draws, redoes the portrait until he has his stroke, his right line. There are 21 drawings by Marguerite. Some of these posing sessions are filmed, because Aimé already has a sense of posterity and the memory of the history of Art.
Around Aimé: Matisse, Bonnard, Rouault (who lives in Grasse), the Dutchman Geer van Velde and the Russian Jean Pougny (in Cannes) then Picasso (in Vallauris) form a small community which meets and helps each other on a daily basis . Everyone appreciates Marguerite's good food. Other artists visited the Maeghts: Tristan Bernard, Thadée Natanson of the Revue Blanche, the poet Pierre Reverdy (to whom he later dedicated an exhibition at the Foundation), the musician Reynaldo Hahn. A great understanding reigns in this small circle. The Maeghts saw Matisse almost every day, from their installation in Vence in 1942, until the painter's death in 1954.
View of the inaugural exhibition at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, October 1945.
“Matisse overturns all the definitions in which we have tried to confine him: hidden in his light, there is no more secret painter.” - Jean Bazaine, Behind the Mirror, 1952
Henri Matisse Le Buisson, 1951, ink and gouache on paper, 149x149 cm.
At the Liberation, Henri Matisse, without a gallery and without a designated dealer, encouraged Aimé Maeght to settle in Paris: “If you put up something in Paris to prove my confidence in you, I want it to be me who does the exhibition of 'opening. » The inauguration of the first Galerie Maeght took place on December 6, 1945 with drawings by Matisse made during the war. It’s a huge success. “I found in Matisse a spirit which was the counterpoint to that of Bonnard. They called him Herr Professor, he knew how to explain and give the reasons for his creation; Bonnard didn't know it, he let himself be carried away by his intuition. Matisse is an art of apparent ease, he strips it down to keep only the essential. » concludes Aimé Maeght.
Aimé Maeght, shortly before, in Cannes, declared: “I no longer wanted to be a painting dealer, in truth I wanted to be a publisher. » As soon as the Galerie Maeght opened, the magazine Pierre à feu was published, a veritable literary manifesto which was also printed in 40,000 copies, in pocket format, to be sold in station kiosks. Poetry within everyone's reach in a way... A great ideal. In 1947, Matisse created the cover of an issue of Pierre à feu with cut-out papers which prefigured “Jazz”, published the same year by Tériade.
Le Vent des Épines by Jacques Kober, illustrated with works by Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, published by Pierre à Feu, Maeght Éditeur in 1947Aimé Maeght brings together his painter and poet friends in limited edition books, with unpublished texts enriched with original engravings. And, at a time when the world displays all its violence and ugliness, he realizes his old dream, his great idea, to combine painting and poetry.
“Matisse draws up close, at a distance where a woman's body becomes hills, skies, lakes of shadow. Where the outline of a flower is torn like storm clouds. The “external” world is not an object detached from it. His forms are less the terms of his knowledge than the paths of his passion. Not the curiosity of a walker, but the ardent, blind itinerary of a lover who does not think of hip, flower or face, but identifies with them. » Jean Bazaine, Behind the Mirror, 1952
Henri Matisse, Portrait of Marguerite Maeght, 1945, pencil on paper, 51 x38 cm.
Henri Matisse at the Colombe d’Or, Saint-Paul.