While Henri Mattisse is one of the most widely-celebrated artists in history, a formative decade in his career has remained largely unexamined until now. In this exhibition of more than 100 rarely seen paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, the Philadelphia Museum of Art—in collaboration with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and the Musée Matisse Nice—offers a rigorous exploration of Matisse in the 1930s. This transformative decade actually began just west of Philadelphia, at the Barnes Foundation, where Matisse was fulfilling a commission for a three-part mural called The Dance. Eager to get out of his artistic slump, he used a new creative process that involved photography and pre-colored cut papers rather than models and elaborate studio setups. The result was a total revitalization of his aesthetic vision, a change that came to define his work in the following decade. —Nyla Gilstrap