Matisse and Teriade: Collaborative works between artist and art publisher

May 01, 1997 - June 28, 1997

“I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex, yet I am always ready to reconceive through simplicity.” 
– Henri Matisse: How I Made My Books, 1946

Yoshii Gallery is pleased to announce a collaborative oeuvre by the artist Matisse and Tériade, the fabled art publisher of the 20th Century.  With Matisse and Tériade, Yoshii Gallery will celebrate the centennial of Tériade’s birth (May 2, 1897).

Among Tériade’s most important publications are is Livres d’artistes, made in collaboration with Rouault, Chagall, Picasso, Giacometti, Miró and many others.  He published four books with Matisse and devoted three of twenty-six issues of Verve to him.  We present a selection of Matisse’s works created especially for the review.

We also are exhibiting their first book, Lettres Portugaises (1946), which was inspired by the poignant letters of unrequitted love written by Marianna Alcaforado.  Matisse’s sketches of the imagined love affair weave through the book with an empathic line in harmony with the words.

Sketches, preliminary drawings and documents, will bring together rare examples of their mutual creative endeavors for one book.  The original maquette for Lettres Portugaises has been generously lent to Yoshii Gallery by the Bibliothéque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris.

Photographs by Héléne Adant, Gisele Freund and the legendary Henri Cartier-Bresson, will also be featured in this exhibition.