16 Mar-17 July 2005.

From the great painters life-saving surgery in 1941 until his death in 1954 his work embarked in a new direction representing an explosion of pure color and an abstraction tending more and more towards signs and arabesques. For Matisse, his rescue from death and recovery from surgery gave him a sense of rebirth which would influence his work during his later years. The link running through this exhibition and this period of his life, which was to surface in his correspondence with close friend Andr Rouveyre, was the need to rediscover everything anew in a positive light. Some 80 paintings from this little explored phase of the painters repertoire is waiting to be rediscovered itself at the Muse du Luxembourg. Tickets cost 10 for adults and 7 for under 26-year olds.