You can tell the big Fall auctions are approaching because the heavy-hitting private dealers are unveiling their museum-quality scholarly shows like the Matisse and his Models exhibit opening today at Eykyn MacLean on East 67th St. Eykyn and MacLean are private dealers but they’ve got an interest in maintaining a public presence. Their first show of works from the Giacometti estate had a huge impact. Now they’ve commissioned a show that puts the model at the center of Matisse’s entire career as an artist. Here, in these 46 works, is everyone of the models who helped Matisse explore abstraction, form and color:
The exhibition is curated by Ann Dumas, the highly-respected authority in Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern European art. A scholarly catalogue will accompany the exhibition, with a lead essay by Dumas that chronicles Matisse’s principal models and sheds new light on the artist’s working process and the pivotal role his models played in the development of his art. An additional essay in the catalogue by Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling presents new research on several of Matisse’s Italian models, whose identities and backgrounds have previously been uncertain.
