Chez Matisse at H’Art — private tour
1,5 hours | Up to 6 guests | 149 €
“Art is an escape from reality.”
— Henri Matisse
I’m an independent professional guide.
For the past ten years I’ve been sharing my love of art and history with guests in Paris and Amsterdam.
I’ve returned to the Centre Pompidou over the years as a student, an art lover, a guide. Many of these works feel like old friends.
Now I’d love to introduce them to you — and make you feel at home Chez Matisse.
In 2026, H’ART Museum in Amsterdam presents Chez Matisse — a major exhibition devoted to Henri Matisse and his place in the story of modern art.
More than 80 works, mostly from the collection of the Centre Pompidou — currently closed for renovation until 2030 — bring Matisse into dialogue with artists as different as Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Gontcharova, Mark Rothko or Daniel Buren.
In the early 1900s, Matisse revolutionised Western painting with his extraordinary use of colour. Fifty years later, his famous cut-outs transformed the very idea of pictorial space. In between came more than half a century of restless experimentation with colour, line and form — and a constant search for new ways of seeing and creating.
Matisse’s legacy cannot be reduced to a recognisable palette or style. Above all, it lies in his extraordinary freedom to reinvent his own way of creating. For Matisse, being an artist meant learning to see the world afresh — with the curiosity, openness and freedom of a child.
Chez Matisse follows that creative journey while placing his work in dialogue with the international avant-gardes of the 20th century. Rather than simply looking back at Matisse as a “master of colour”, the exhibition explores how the questions he raised — about colour, space, perception and the very act of seeing — have resonated with generations of artists, and remain surprisingly alive today.
Your guide
Working as a guide in Paris, I’ve always enjoyed giving tours of temporary exhibitions — a chance to truly explore an artist’s world in depth and detail.
Much like his beloved textiles, Matisse’s own creative story is woven from many threads — colours, books, encounters with other artists and cultures. One of those threads feels especially personal to me: his connection with Russia, where I was born and raised.
But it is only one thread in a much larger tapestry. Chez Matisse is built around connections and creative dialogue — between artists, generations, places and ideas. And that is exactly the kind of space I love as a guide: telling stories, making connections, and leaving plenty of room for questions, conversation and discoveries along the way.