Matisse Exhibition Opening in San Antonio

SAN ANTONIO, TX, June 10, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Matisse: Life in Color

Masterworks from The Baltimore Museum of Art
Arrives in San Antonio this June. Only Museum in region to host exhibition.

The San Antonio Museum of Art will present Matisse: Life in Color, Masterworks from The Baltimore Museum of Art to San Antonio, June 14 through September 7, 2014. This sweeping exhibition features almost one hundred paintings and sculptures and works on paper spanning six decades of Henri Matisse's prolific career. Drawn from The Baltimore Museum of Art's permanent collection, perhaps the finest collection of Matisse's work in the world, Matisse: Life in Color offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for San Antonio, and indeed, all of Texas and our region, to share in the beauty and importance of such a magnificent body of work.

"The exhibition will enrich our community and increase the national and international stature of the San Antonio Museum of Art as well as the city of San Antonio as an important cultural destination," said Katherine C. Luber, The Kelso Director of the San Antonio Museum of Art.

As one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) fundamentally altered the course of modern art with his stylistic innovations. Across a succession of stylistic periods, Matisse aimed to discover the "essential character of things" through art that expressed balance and serenity. He experimented throughout his career with abandoning conventional perspective and form in favor of dramatically simplified areas of pure color, flat shapes and decorative patterns.

The majority of the artwork in Matisse: Life in Color, Masterworks from The Baltimore Museum of Art comes from the renowned Cone Collection, formed by Baltimore sisters Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone. Noted for their enduring dedication to modernism, the sisters assembled one of the largest private collections of the work of Matisse in the world.

The exhibition is organized and circulated by The Baltimore Museum of Art. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.

In San Antonio, this exhibition is generously funded by Robert D. Harper Fund, The Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, GM Foundation, Holt Foundation, Helen & Everett H. Jones Exhibition Fund, G.A.C. Halff Foundation, H-E-B, Rod & Kim Lewis Foundation, Anonymous, Argo Group/ARIS, Lucifer Lighting Company, Gorman Foundation, Claudia Huntington and Marshall Miller, Jr., William and Salomé Scanlan Foundation, Daniel J. Sullivan Family Charitable Foundation, Marshall T. Steves Sr. Foundation, Edouard Foundation, and Valero Energy Foundation.

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The San Antonio Museum of Art is housed in the historic Lone Star Brewery on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio Riverwalk.  The collection contains more than 25,000 works representing 5,000 years of history and cultures from around the world. Visit http://samuseum.org for more information about the San Antonio Museum of Art and its collections.