Dance II

Completed in 1910 and held in the Hermitage, 'Dance II' is among the most celebrated paintings of the twentieth century and the definitive version of the commission Matisse executed for Sergei Shchukin to decorate the staircase of his Moscow mansion. The earlier sketch version ('Dance I,' now in MoMA) used softer pinks and greens; Shchukin pressed for something more forceful, and the Hermitage version responds with a fierce, almost terrifying energy — five nude figures in terracotta red against saturated blue and green, locked in a ring dance that barely contains its own momentum. The painting draws on ancient sources — Greek vase painting, Dionysian ritual imagery — as well as contemporary dances Matisse had observed in Paris. Hung alongside 'Music' on Shchukin's staircase landing, these panels represented the most ambitious decorative commission a living Western artist had received since the nineteenth century.

Three colours dominate with absolute chromatic intensity: the figures in brick red-orange, the sky in cobalt blue, the ground in vivid green. Matisse eliminates all spatial complexity and internal modelling, reducing the composition to flat colour shapes outlined by curving contours.