A journey through Matisse’s epoch-making practice, from his early Fauvist works to his brilliant cutouts

The volume is anchored by and named after Charles Baudelaire’s 1857 poem “Invitation to the Voyage,” to which Matisse repeatedly referred in his lifetime. Following Baudelaire’s poem, the book is thus conceived as a journey through the work and life of Matisse, in which travel played an important role.
Published alongside the Matisse retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler, this monograph sails across the many waves of the artist’s practice. Beginning with his early paintings from around 1900, Invitation to the Voyage then carries the reader from his revolutionary Fauvist works of the 1910s to the sensual paintings of his Nice period in the 1930s and his legendary silhouettes of the late 1940s and 1950s. The wealth of important paintings, sculptures and silhouettes gathered here reveals the development and richness of Matisse’s masterful oeuvre.
Henri Matisse (1869–1954) is one of Modernism’s leading exponents. By liberating color from its conventional associations and simplifying forms, he redefined painting and brought a hitherto unknown lightness to art. Matisse was also an innovator in sculpture, and in his late silhouettes he developed an unmistakable interplay between painting, drawing and sculpture.