Matisse with Suzanna Héman

The Stedelijk Museum is pleased to invite you to the special series of Gallery Talks given by the experts behind the exhibition The Oasis of Matisse, on view from March 27 to August 16, 2015. During the tours the speakers will discuss a selection of artworks on the basis of their own areas of expertise, research, or interest. This way, the Stedelijk Museum provides room for new and – above all – personal reflections on the paintings and drawings in the exhibition.

All the speakers are part of the team of curators of the Stedelijk Museum and are involved in the exhibition as researchers or co-curators: trainee curator Ceciel Stoutjesdijk specializes in modern art, assistant curator Suzanna Héman made a selection of the most beautiful prints and drawings from the museum collection for the exhibition, paper restorer Tessa Rietveld contributed to important reports on both the condition of the works in the collection and on the loans to the exhibition, and academic researcher Maurice Rummens is the expert on Matisse in the Stedelijk Museum and wrote for the catalogue.

About the exhibition the oasis of matisse

The Oasis of Matisse is the largest exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse that has ever been put on in the Netherlands. Furthermore, with more than 100 works it is one of the largest exhibitions in the history of the Stedelijk. The French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) depicted (Eastern) nudes, fabrics, carpets, potted plants, and idyllic landscapes looking for the most perfect possible correspondence between color and form. The exhibition shows how throughout his life Matisse worked on creating a light, cheerful, and carefree atmosphere with minimal means: the Oasis of Matisse.

More about the speaker 

Suzanna Héman is involved in the exhibition The Oasis of Matisse as an assistant curator for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Her area of specialization – Prints, Drawings & Artbooks – is strongly represented in the exhibition in the form of an impressive installation of Matisse’s artist’s book Jazz (1949) which is part of the collection of the Stedelijk Museum. Héman has been responsible for many presentations of the collection, including The Printed Works of H.N.Werkman (2013) and Herman de Vries: Artist’s books (2011). In addition, she took part in the organization of various exhibitions, such as Mapping the Studio (2006) and Conceptual Art (1965-1975) in Dutch and Belgian collections (2002). She has regularly published on Lucebert, including Lucebert: unica: seven unique cahiers in facsimile (2011) and Lucebert reading: the library of a poet (2009).