Original Henri Matisse Poster "Papiers Découpés" 1953, Mourlot

This is an original two-colour lithographic poster printed by Mourlot Frères for the exhibition Papiers Découpés at the Galerie Berggruen & Cie in Paris in 1953 — one of the most celebrated shows of Matisse's final creative chapter, dedicated to the cut-outs that would come to be recognised as among the most revolutionary works in the history of modern art. An edition of just 500, this is a rare and precisely documented piece, today held in the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) invented the papiers découpés out of necessity — confined to a wheelchair in his final years, no longer able to stand at a canvas, he turned to scissors and painted paper as his primary medium. What began as a workaround became a liberation: cutting directly into colour, as he described it, with the spontaneity and directness that decades of painting had prepared him for but never quite achieved. The cut-outs — Jazz, the Chapel at Vence, the great panels of La Piscine — are now considered his supreme achievement, the culmination of a life's work in a single, blazingly simple gesture.

The Galerie Berggruen was the perfect stage for this revelation. Heinz Berggruen, whose gallery at 70 rue de l'Université had become one of the most trusted spaces for modern art in Paris, understood the cut-outs' significance before almost anyone else. The poster — a bold red leaf-like form against a pale blue ground, printed in just two colours — is itself a masterclass in the economy of means that defined Matisse's late style: maximum impact, minimum gesture.

The poster has been freshly linen backed — the gold standard of vintage poster conservation — ensuring the piece is stable, flat, and ready for framing.

A landmark piece — Matisse's most radical invention, at the gallery that believed in it first, in an edition of five hundred.