Henri Matisse

With the cooperation of the Matisse Estate, the Alan Cristea Gallery is mounting the most important exhibition of Henri Matisse etchings ever staged in a commercial gallery in London.

It was not our intention just to show a representative cross-section of Matisse's lithographs, etchings, aquatints, linocuts and wood engravings. We preferred to concentrate solely on the etchings and we have chosen the fifty prints which we consider to be his most accomplished works in the medium. The exhibition begins with his first ever print, a self-portrait executed between 1900 and 1903, and ends with an extremely rare portrait of a woman printed in an edition of only 6 copies in 1937.

The period between these dates was his most prolific in both lithography and etching - he created over 100 etchings in 1929 alone -, but these works are seldom seen, since all were printed in very small editions of between 6 and 25 copies. This is the first time these works will be exhibited.