(Enlarge) “Young Woman with Face Buried in Arms” from 1929 is part of “Matisse as Printmaker,” now at the Baltimore Museum of Art. (Image Courtesy of Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society, New York)

Visual Arts

Henri Matisse was a prolific artist in mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking. Although the Baltimore Museum of Art exhibit "Matisse as Printmaker" devotes most of its attention to that one medium, the 150 prints presented here are complemented by related artworks in other mediums.

This traveling exhibit was organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, but its installation at the BMA incorporates works from the museum's own Cone Collection. The Matisse Foundation also recently gave many prints to the BMA, so this gift makes Baltimore even more of a mecca for Matisse fans.

Matisse (1869-1954) worked variations on the same few subjects and themes throughout his long career. Such variations are seen to particularly good advantage in the thematically linked prints that he produced in series.

The chronologically arranged exhibit also gives a sense of how he favored various printmaking techniques in different periods.

Greeting you at the entrance is one of his earliest prints, titled "Henri Matisse Engraving" (1900-1903), in which the self-portrait depicts his hands laboring over the very activity that forms the basis for the show.

There's also a reminder of the conventional artistic climate from which Matisse emerged at the dawn of the 20th century in "Two Women in City Costumes" (1900- 1903). The frilly Victorian dresses and fancy hats on these two women completely cover their bodies. These ladies have the distinction of being among the few fully clothed women in the show.

Hanging nearby is "Small Light Woodcut" (1906), whose nude female form is defined by a few deftly conceived lines. The woman's physical presence comes across in such spare details as her thick eyebrows and jutting hip. Behind her are patterned lines intended to suggest a domestic interior.

Matisse had arrived as an artist by this time, meaning that many of his female models would be posed similarly in the years ahead.

One of the artist's most masterful compositional strategies is the way in which the single models are fused with the furnishings behind them. Traditional distinctions between foreground and background tend to blur.

In "Arabesque" (1924), the woman poses with one arm assertively raised behind her head. The busy floral patterning on her blouse essentially merges with nearly identical patterning on the wall behind her. It almost seems as if the woman's head is emerging from wallpaper.

That "Arabesque" speaks to this French artist's habit of posing his models in costumes and settings representing an exotic take on North African and Middle Eastern culture.

Any academic textbook entry on what's termed Orientalism could be illustrated with "Odalisque in Striped Culottes, Reflected in the Mirror" (1923). This standing and very slender model's nude torso is accentuated by the dangling necklace she's wearing against her skin.

Her striped pants have a curving shape that slightly exaggerates her natural feminine curves. Also, the patterning on the pants essentially is carried through to the patterning found on the floor and in the chair's upholstery. The woman's reflection in a full-length mirror makes the composition even busier.

Some of Matisse's prints are as detail-oriented as that odalisque standing next to a mirror, but more often he strives to reduce the figure and her setting to as few lines as he can in order to capture their essence.

One of the most beautiful such prints, "Veiled Figure with Two Bracelets" (1929) only has a few curving lines to define the woman's head and the virtually invisible veil across it. Although one can make out her eyes, lips, and bracelets-adorned arm, there are no extraneous details.

Rather than a portrait of a particular woman, this is a study in curving lines that complement and occasionally directly meet each other. Note how the woman's rather sketchy hand is really just an extension of the flowing line of her arm.

This reductive tendency also can be seen in Matisse's later depictions of himself. A 1944 self-portrait provides definitional details of his bearded face leading up to a nearly bald dome still sporting a few hairs on top; a self-portrait from 1951 is comprised of no more than a few oval lines for his rounded face, equally round glasses and totally bald head.

The artist achieves a sophisticated simplicity in his later work. Then again, having less hair meant he didn't need to make as many lines.

"Matisse as Printmaker" runs through Jan. 3 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, at 10 Art Museum Drive in Baltimore. There is no admission charge for this exhibit. Call 443-573-1700 or go to www.artbma.org.

user comments (0)