The product
of countless drawings
and color sketches, the
final
version of the Barnes mural.
Dance, shows the clean,
stylistic
refinement of Matisse's mature
n 1930, Matisse, restless with the
work he had imposed on himself threw off his well-ordered first
schedule of
for almost three decades,
and
left
France.
He
traveled
to the United States, then to Tahiti to see for himself
the light
The
life
rigid
— and the islands — that had captivated Gauguin.
trip revived
later
him and upon
his return to
Nice a year
he undertook an immensely exacting project that
once again engaged his obsessive need to simplify painting.
The
project
was a gigantic and complicated mural (above)
for Dr. Albert
Barnes of Merion, Pennsylvania. In
it
and the
paintings that followed, Matisse refined and distilled his art;
many versions of some of these works, and they stand today as records that show step by step how he reduced he made
his painting to its simplest
and purest
state.
131
art.