Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard are two artists linked by a solid relationship of friendship and understanding on a professional level. They shared common characteristics and pictorial themes: the first came from the Fauvist experience, the second from the Nabis group. Both considered the role of color fundamental - bright, contrasted, pure, intense - as the main material of pictorial practice.
Until January 15, 2024, the Pinacoteca di Brera offers a dialogue between Matisse and Bonnard by placing Femme au violon, from the Musée de L'Orangerie in Paris, alongside the Portrait of Marta Bonnard. In both canvases the subject is a woman in an interior, portrayed with different languages: on the one hand synthetic compositions of flat and two-dimensional surfaces, of great visual immediacy, on the other a profusion of brushstrokes that make the many elements present vibrate, dilating the borders of the canvas.
Matisse's model and Bonnard's partner, portrayed posing in a moment of pause, testify to the centrality of women, inspirer of images recreated from reality, which make them eternal.
