Henri Matisse. The Red Studio

14 October 2022 – 26 February 2023

Henri Matisse. The Red Studio

Next autumn, SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark – will present a new exhibition on Henri Matisse. Born out of a collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, the show brings together the artworks depicted in the painting The Red Studio for the first time in over 100 years. PRESS RELEASE

In 1911, the French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954) painted The Red Studio. Matisse is considered one of the great masters of twentieth-century art, and the painting is regarded as a key painting in Matisse’s oeuvre and a foundational work in the history of modern art. Owned by The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the picture is one of the museum’s most important works and a favourite with artists and audiences alike.

The large canvas depicts Matisse’s studio in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux filled with his own paintings, sculptures, furniture and decorative objects. The most remarkable feature of The Red Studio is Matisse’s decision to saturate the painting’s surface with a monochrome red covering walls, floor and furniture of the interior – a radical move whose significance is still discussed today.

In the autumn of 2022, the painting will come to Copenhagen as part of an exhibition co-organised with MoMA. The exhibition will sensationally reunite The Red Studio with the artworks reproduced in it for the first time since they left the artist’s studio more than a hundred years ago.

The ambitious and focused exhibition will offer a unique opportunity to experience The Red Studio in Denmark. Here visitors can scrutinise Matisse’s choice of subject matter and gain rare insight into his working methods at a crucial point in his career.

“A few years ago, a long-held dream came one step closer to coming true when our colleagues from MoMA asked us if we wanted to collaborate on an exhibition centred on what may be Matisse’s most important painting The Red Studio, which only very rarely leaves the museum in New York. This exhibition gives our audience a unique opportunity to see key works from SMK’s large Matisse collection presented around one of the absolute masterpieces of European modernism. It’s going to be huge!” says Mikkel Bogh, director of SMK.