Proposal from the Quirinal Stables, promoted by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, by Roma Capitale - Department of Culture, Creativity, Art and Tourism Promotion, the exhibition is organized by the Special Palexpo in coproduction with MondoMostre and catalog edited by Skira Editore. On display are over one hundred works by Matisse with some absolute masterpieces - for the first time in Italy - the major museums of the world: Tate, MET, MoMa, Pushkin, Hermitage, Pompidou, Orangerie, Philadelphia, Washington, to name a few.  

Curated by Ester Coen, with a scientific committee composed by John Elderfield, Remi Labrusse and Olivier Berggruen, Matisse. Arabesque, wants to give an idea of ​​the suggestions that the East was in the paintings of Matisse: an East which, with its artifice, its arabesques, its colors, suggests a more extensive space, a real plastic space and offers a new breath to his compositions, freeing it from formal constraints, the need of perspective and "likeness" to open in a space made of vibrant colors, a new idea of ​​decorative art founded on the idea of ​​pure surface.