In 1905, when Henri Matisse and his fellow Fauves (“wild beasts”) exhibited together at the Salon d’Automne, the room was alive with lusty color, which the critic Louis Vauxcelles described as an “orgy of pure tones.” Matisse’s Fauvist adventures paved the way for his travels to Algeria, Spain, and Morocco, where he painted scenes in unmodulated color. The 1920s, however, saw him moving into neoclassicism along with other artists of the time. In 1941, bed-bound after cancer surgery, Matisse began to make cut-outs, works of sublime simplicity. “An artist must never be a prisoner of himself,” he famously said. “Prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation, prisoner of success.” Japan’s first large-scale Matisse retrospective in 20 years celebrates the unfading brilliance that lasted until 1954, when the artist died at age 84. —Elena Clavarino