MUDEC in Milan presents Matisse: The World in a room In Milan, MUDEC presents an ambitious and scholarly exhibition project exploring the relationship between Henri Matisse (Le Cateau – Cambrésis, 1869 – Nice, 1954) and the cultures he encountered during his studies and travels beyond Europe. Matisse. Il mondo in una stanza (The world in a room) addresses, for the first time systematically, a central and long – overlooked question: how African, Islamic, Russian, Pacific, and Chinese art shaped Matisse’s artistic language from within, redefining the very boundaries of Western modernism.
Produced by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo Il Sole 24 ORE and promoted by the Municipality of Milan – Culture Department, the exhibition Matisse. Il mondo in una stanza is realised in partnership with the Musée Matisse in Nice, with Unipol as Main Sponsor and the support of Turisanda1924 – Alpitour World, and it is curated by Ellen McBreen and Chiara Gatti.
The exhibition is structured into 6 sections and brings together around 100 works, including paintings, works on paper, and sculptures from prestigious international institutions: the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation Collection in New York, the MoMA, the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Musée Picasso, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée du Quai Branly, the Bargello in Florence, the MUDEC, and others. These works are accompanied by a rare and rich collection of objects and fabrics – including a personal collection especially dear to Matisse – on loan from Musée Matisse in Nice, the Museum of Civilizations in Rome, and other institutions, recollecting the fabric of Matisse’s dialogues with the art and design of other geographies.
A particular focus is dedicated to decorative projects and artist’s books: the monumental diptych Océanie, the famous plates of Jazz, the Poésies by Stéphane Mallarmé and Pasiphaé: Chant de Minos (Les Crétois) by Henry de Montherlant. The exhibition also features drawings and decorative elements from Matisse’s final masterpiece, the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence on the French Riviera, representing the ultimate synthesis of years of artistic research. The exhibition is enriched by vintage photographs, including a sequence of previously unpublished shots taken by Matisse himself in Morocco.
Matisse: The World in a room Matisse. Il mondo in una stanza (Matisse. The World in a Room) serves as a benchmark in the critical re-evaluation of the concepts of otherness, primitivism, and orientalism. Its strength lies in its philological precision: unlike exhibitions that have evoked the “Orient” in a generic way, the show highlights hybridization—Islamic arabesques and Romanian clothing geometries, Gelede Yoruba masks, and medieval Russian icons—bringing to light the ambiguity and complexity of a creative imagination that drew from distant worlds to build one of the most original visual languages of the 20th century. This reflection invites us today to re-read Matisse’s appropriations through a postcolonial perspective.
