Acquavella to Show Major Matisse Exhibition This Spring

This spring, Acquavella Galleries will stage one of the most ambitious gallery exhibitions of Henri Matisse in recent memory. “Matisse: The Pursuit of Harmony,” on view from April 9 through May 22, will bring together 50 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that span roughly half a century of the artist’s career.

For the gallery, the show is saturated with history. It is the first exhibition devoted entirely to Matisse at Acquavella since 1973, and comes at a time when blue-chip masterpieces typically surface a few at a time at auction or are confined to private sales conducted behind closed doors.

The exhibition follows how Matisse’s painting and sculpture practices fed one other, each offering ways for him to solve different formal problems. It opens with early works from the first decade of the 20th century, including The Serf (1900–04), Madeleine I (1901), and the related painting Male Model (ca. 1900).

At the center of the exhibition is all four works that comprise the “Back” series. Conceived between 1908 and 1930, the monumental bronze reliefs trace Matisse’s exploration of the human figure across time. In the first relief, the body still feels rooted in the natural world. By the fourth, the figure has been pared down into bold vertical forms. The series shows an artist revisiting an idea again and again, refining it until only the essential remains.

The works on view at Acquavella all come from major collections, being brought together in this way for the first time in years. In addition to loans from private collections, Acquavella has also secured works from major institutions for the exhibition, including the Museum of Modern Art, which is contributing a number of early sculptures and drawings; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is sending paintings from the 1910s; the Phillips Collection, which lends Studio, Quai Saint-Michel (1916); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will lend Reclining Odalisque (1926); and a late interior from the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The resulting show will likely feel closer to a focused museum survey than is typical for a commercial gallery. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog published with Rizzoli, with essays by leading Matisse scholars.

In a phone interview with ARTnews, co-owner Nick Acquavella described the exhibition as something his father, Bill Acquavella, had wanted to do for years. The family, which has operated the gallery since the 1920s, always believed they could mount a major Matisse show. The question was whether they could mount a great one. The difference came down to loans.

About a year and a half ago, the gallery began actively pursuing the idea. Early conversations with collectors set the tone. Once a few key commitments came through, momentum built. Bill Acquavella, now in his late 80s, leaned into relationships that stretch back decades.

One of the works in the show was sold by Bill in 1967 to a private collector who has remained close to the gallery ever since. That painting now returns to 79th Street as part of this exhibition. For Nick, that story captures what makes a show like this possible: long-term trust.

The exhibition places special emphasis on Matisse’s exploration of the female figure. More than 20 works focus on reclining nudes made between the 1920s and ’30s. The juxtaposition of Matisse’s paintings with his sculptures gives a look at how the artist first tested a pose in one medium before translating it to another, often simplifying and refining it as he reworked it. Large sculptures such as Large Seated Nude (1922–29) sit alongside canvases that echo the same relaxed, natural posture. Late works from 1940 extend the arc of the show into Matisse’s mature years, when he continued to pare down his lines.

For Acquavella, the show is both a tribute to its long-standing engagement with the work of Matisse and a statement on the gallery’s ambitions a century into its history.