The Centre Pompidou in Paris is closed for renovation, and some of its finest paintings are travelling in the meantime. Chez Matisse, at H’ART Museum on the Amstel until 14 February 2027, brings around 80 works from its collection to Amsterdam. Thirty-seven of them are by Henri Matisse.
The exhibition opened on 3 October 2026. It is the third that H’ART Museum has made with the Centre Pompidou, after Kandinsky and Brancusi, and it sets Matisse beside the artists who worked around him and after him, Picasso among them, and the Americans Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, whose fields of colour owe him a debt.
La Blouse roumaine
The painting most people will come for is La Blouse roumaine, from 1940: a woman in an embroidered Romanian blouse, painted in flat red, blue and white. It has left the Centre Pompidou only once before. Spend some time with it, then look for how the same simplification runs through the rest of the rooms.
The building
H’ART Museum occupies the Amstelhof, a long 17th-century almshouse on the Amstel that was a home for elderly people for more than three centuries. For years it was Hermitage Amsterdam; it took its new name in 2023.
Plan your visit
Chez Matisse runs until 14 February 2027. Tickets are €27.50 for adults and free for anyone 17 or under, with timed entry. The museum is a short walk from Waterlooplein and the Magere Brug, and on winter evenings you can combine it with the Amsterdam Light Festival route.
Stay nearby · 1 of 10 in Amsterdam
Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam
Six grand canal palaces along the UNESCO-listed Herengracht.
