March 1930. Matisse leaves for Tahiti. At sixty he needs a change of scenery, a different light and space. After making plans to travel to the Marquesas Islands in Gauguin's footsteps,he spends several weeks in Tahiti, absorbing the exhilirating otherness of the South Pacific.His visit includes a brief sojourn on a wild stretch of coast as a guest of filmmaker F.W.Murnau,and a foray to the coral atolls that enchanted Robert Louis Stevenson. By the time Matisse returns to his home in the South of France, he feels renewed and has discovered a new balance of lines and colors,which explode into life in the paper cut-outs his last period and revolutionize modern art.

Paule Laudon has been living in Tahiti for over thirty years.A founding member of the Association des Amis du Musee Gauguin, which runs that museum,she organizes exhibitions,symposiums and lectures connected with Gauguin, the French writer Victor Segalen, and others.She is currently Director of the Gauguin Museum in Tahiti.Paule Laudon has written several books on Tahiti, including a volume on the island and its painters (Les Peintres de Tahiti, Edicom,1997) and the Gallimard Guide to Tahiti (1995).

Foreword

South of the Equator

Matisse and the Polynesians

The Return

Notes

Bibliography