Original lithographic poster printed by Mourlot, Paris. Artwork taken from Nature, morte au magnolia, 1941.

Produced for a major 1956 exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, this original lithographic poster reproduces Matisse’s Nature morte au magnolia (1941), one of his most compelling still lifes from the early 1940s.

Printed by Atelier Mourlot, the image presents a rich interplay of objects—a magnolia blossom, vessels, shell and jug—suspended against a flat, vivid field of colour. The arrangement dissolves traditional perspective, allowing Matisse’s fluid balance of positive and negative space to convey both pictorial harmony and emotional depth.

By the mid‑1950s, Matisse was being increasingly celebrated not just as a leading modern artist but as a defining force in French cultural life. This poster helped articulate that shift: the museum’s endorsement, reproduced at scale through lithography, established the painting’s place within the canon of modern French art at a moment when institutional recognition was shaping post‑war national identity.