Staff at H’ART Museum in Amsterdam have started installing a large retrospective of the French painter Henri Matisse.
Called “Chez Matisse – Masterpieces from Centre Pompidou”, it opens on Saturday 3 October 2026 and runs until Sunday 14 February 2027.
All 80 works in the show come from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which is closed for renovation.
Matisse made 37 of them, a mix of paintings, sculptures and graphic works.
The others are by artists of his own generation and by later painters he influenced, among them Picasso, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
One of the most important pieces, Figure decorative sur fond ornemental, painted in Nice in 1925-1926, was unpacked and hung on the morning of Wednesday 23 September.
A museum spokesperson said it holds a special place in his work because in it he “brings together several core ideas from his work in a single radical composition.
Figure and background become almost one, so that rhythm, color, and decoration primarily determine the image.”
Visitors will also see “La Blouse roumaine” (1940), which the Pompidou almost never lends. It has only left the Paris museum once before.
Matisse (1869-1954) is seen as one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century. “He broke with all academic traditions,” said museum curator Brigit Boelens.
The Netherlands has shown his work on this scale only twice before, most recently in 2015.
Check out our guide to newer museums in Amsterdam worth a visit.