Collection 1950s–1970s

Henri Matisse. Memory of Oceania. Nice-Cimiez, Hôtel Régina, summer 1952-early 1953 482

Gouache on paper, cut and pasted, and charcoal on paper mounted on canvas, 9' 4" x 9' 4 7/8" (284.4 x 286.4 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2025 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Narrator: Memory of Oceania, demonstrates Matisse’s efforts to work with cut paper on a large scale. The imagery is based on memories of the artist’s trip to Tahiti in 1930.

Henri Matisse (read by actor): Swam around the brilliant corals. I would plunge my head into the water and then suddenly I would lift my head above the water and gaze at the luminous whole.

Narrator: This work is quite abstract, but certain elements suggest things he would have seen on his trip. The yellow form at the upper left could be a banana tree; the slanted green rectangle, a floating boat. Curator, Jodi Hauptman.

Curator, Jodi Hauptman: He uses paper to evoke the light of the South Seas. And that’s why he goes. He’s heard about it and he wants to see that light.

It truly is a memory of that experience. When he was in Tahiti, one of the things that’s interesting is that he didn’t really make a lot of work there. And so the work tha’s made really happens during this cut-out period. It’s as if the cut-outs somehow allowed him to access that experience.