The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opened Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism on February 25, 2024, after its Metropolitan Museum of Art presentation. The exhibition examined the decisive summer of 1905, when Henri Matisse and Andre Derain worked in Collioure and pushed color into an autonomous expressive force. By focusing tightly on their dialogue, the show reframed Fauvism not as a loose label for bright painting but as a collaborative experiment in perception, Mediterranean light, and painterly intensity. Its Houston opening extended a major scholarly project, accompanied by a catalogue by Dita Amory and Ann Dumas, to a second U.S. audience.
The exhibition renewed attention to Fauvism's origins as a focused exchange between Matisse and Derain.
