HERMITAGE, General Staff Building Presentation Matisse Room 440

In this room, entirely devoted to Henri Matisse, you‘ll find a magnificent collection of almost forty works by one of the most famous artists of the 20th century.

If you've already seen Gauguin's works, you can't fail to notice the influence they had on Matisse. Evident in these paintings are not only the infantilism and primitivism of his predecessor's works, but also the flatness of Gauguin’s figures and his use of color. Matisse, however, preferred bright, intense, strong colors, and went much further than Gauguin, who continued to portray reality, albeit in his own original way.

I’ll just mention a few of the most interesting masterpieces.

Find the work entitled Arab Coffeehouse.

It was painted during Matisse's time in Morocco, and reveals Gauguin's influence in the search for exotic subjects. In this work, in a very flat space with few lines, the artist has managed to capture the serene atmosphere of a lazy afternoon in a Moroccan café....