Matisse and the Sea. On view at the Saint Louis Art Museum, February 17-May 12, 2024.

FRAME is pleased to announce its contribution to Matisse and the Sea at the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM), Missouri, by helping the research for the exhibition. The exhibit examines the significance of the sea through Matisse’s art and career from early panoramic marine views on the Mediterranean to his late paper cutouts inspired by French Polynesia in the Pacific, and other coastal locations on the Atlantic.

Simon Kelly, Curator of Modern and Contemporary art at SLAM, explains how much Matisse not only loved the sea but everything about it: its light, color, and movement. Matisse’s marine imagery was prolific from panoramic sea views, bathers, to the recreation of life beneath the waves. Visitors can address the diversity of the media in which he expressed through a wide range of paintings, sculptures, paper cut-outs, drawings, prints, ceramics, and textiles.

PResented through May 12, 2024, the exhibition makes a particular focus on Matisse’s iconic coastal painting, Bathers with a Turtle, belonging to the collections for the SLAM. It explores the range of sources, from Cezanne to African sculpture, that informed this picture at a moment when Matisse is shifting from naturalism to abstraction. For Simon Kelly, the piece “is the Mona Lisa of the modern collection”.

Learn more on the exhibition.