Original signed in plate lithographic poster printed by Mourlot, Paris.

This striking lithograph was commissioned for The Sculpture of Matisse and Three Paintings with Studies at The Tate Gallery, London (9 January–22 February 1953) — one of the first major exhibitions to assert the full force of Matisse’s sculptural vision. Although Matisse is celebrated worldwide for his paintings and later cut‑outs, his work in sculpture remains less familiar. This exhibition, and this poster, deliberately challenged that hierarchy.

The poster’s imagery distils Matisse’s sculptural vision into an arresting graphic statement: simplified yet expressive contours that evoke the tactile presence and rhythmic balance of sculpted forms, while also suggesting the intuitive abstraction that would mark his later cut‑outs. It stands as more than advertising ephemera: it is a document of modernism, where printmaking, sculpture and exhibition combined to broaden how an artist’s work could be perceived in public.

Printed at the legendary Atelier Mourlot in Paris — the workshop at the centre of modern printmaking — the image translates the physicality of sculpture into pure graphic form.