Henri Matisse
La Gerbe1953

On view:

Geffen Galleries, Henri Matisse: La Gerbe

Abstract paper cutout composition with dozens of flat, plant- and hand-like shapes in cobalt blue, black, orange, green, and red massed into a dense cluster on a cream background, inscribed 'HM 53'

Artist or Maker: Henri Matisse
France, 1869-1954
Title: La Gerbe
Place Made: France
Date Made: 1953
Medium: Ceramic tile embedded in plaster
Dimensions: 119 3/8 × 142 1/8 in. (303.21 × 361 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Frances L. Brody, in honor of the museum's twenty-fifth anniversary
Accession Number: M.2010.1
Classification: Installation Art
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: In the last years of his life, Henri Matisse was commissioned by collectors Sidney and Frances Brody to create a ceramic wall work for their A. Quincy Jones−designed home in Los Angeles. Color was the key focus of Matisse’s art—decorative in conception and emotionally expressive; his goal was to produce “an art of balance, of purity and serenity.” If Matisse’s Fauve works (beginning in 1905) are understood as a dialogue between color and line, his last works—the so-called gouaches découpées, or cut gouaches—stand as a summation of his intentions. La Gerbe, executed in ceramic, is Matisse’s only West Coast commission. It is based on a paper cutout of the same title in the Grunwald Center Collection, Hammer Museum, UCLA.

Stephanie Barron
Selected Bibliography: Jayne, Thomas with Anne Walker. The Finest Tea Rooms in America: Fifty Influential Interiors from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2010.
Aloi, Giovanni. Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2025.

Monday	11 am–6 pm
Tuesday	11 am–6 pm
Wednesday	Closed
Thursday	11 am–6 pm
Friday	11 am–8 pm
Saturday	10 am–7 pm
Sunday	10 am–7 pm