For the first time, an exhibition brings together paintings and drawings made in Ajaccio at a time when Matisse discovered the Mediterranean and the light of the South. It will allow to understand his plastic preoccupations, the influence of the surrounding environment (colors, the Mediterranean, the light) in the context of the end of the XIXth century in Ajaccio.
The course of the exhibition will show how this stay in Corsica was a decisive moment during which Matisse, who had painted his first outdoor paintings in Brittany under the influence of Monet, freed himself from all doctrine. "And soon I was seduced by the brilliance of pure color. I came back from my trip with a passion for the colors of the rainbow" he said to the journalist Jacques Guenne in 1925. This discovery would lead seven years later to Fauvism.
As part of the "1898: Matisse en Corse, un pays merveilleux" exhibition, Helene Bailly Gallery will lend a work by Henri Matisse "Maisons à Kervilahouen, Belle-Île" (1896) to the Musée de la Corse.