Women of Valor in the Art World
- Rossella BLUE Mocerino
- Sep 10
- 4 min read
Marguerite Matisse-Duthuit
Marguerite was not only the daughter of painter Henri Matisse but his preferred model. There was a strong bond between father and daughter which comes through in the massive output of portraits which depict her from childhood to adulthood. She is easily recognized in his work by the black ribbon she wore around her neck to hide the scar, which resulted from a tracheotomy she underwent at the young age of six. She posed for her father as a child and as an adult and gave him insightful and intelligent comments on his work, demonstrating that their relationship extended beyond that of painter and model. They mutually respected and valued each other. She rarely appeared in her father’s work after she married the art critic Georges Duthuit in 1923.
At age 51 Marguerite joined the French Resistance as a courier for the political group Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. These clandestine activities were unbeknown to her father. Marguerite felt that “we cannot nor should we lose interest in the era in which we are living - in those who are suffering, who are dying.” In April 1944 she was arrested by the Gestapo. Interrogated and tortured, she was on her way to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women when a miracle occurred. The train that was carrying her to the notorious concentration camp came under Allied air raid. In the confusion, she escaped and hid in the forest to be later rescued by other members of the French Resistance.
She was reunited with her now ailing father in the small French town of Vence. Over the next two weeks, Matisse did two charcoal portraits of Marguerite. He listened to her recounting all that had happened to her. He noticed the physical changes in her and saw her as a prematurely aged woman but he also picked up the flame of the resistance fighter whom he greatly admired. After her father’s death, Marguerite dedicated the rest of her life to cataloguing her father’s work and managing future exhibitions to ensure a lasting legacy of her father’s work; but today our eyes rest on Marguerite.
Information gathered from the exhibition Matisse et Marguerite. LE REGARD D’UN PÈRE at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris August 2025
Gabriele Münter
Gabriele Münter was a key member of the Blue Rider, a group of Munich based artists from 1911 - 1914, who experimented with Expressionism and Abstraction. The group’s name is derived from an early Kandinsky painting portraying a rider in a blue cloak. It became a symbol of the artistic journey these artists were undertaking. Münter was also Kandinsky’s lover for many years. Although a notable artist in her own right, Münter has been relegated by history as first Kandinsky's lover and afterwards as an artist of some notable talent. Her work deserves more widespread recognition and one hopes the recent show at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, which I was lucky to see, is just the beginning.
It is while getting acquainted with her work at the Paris exhibition that I became aware of her contribution to saving modern art from the clutches of Nazism. Hitler had declared modern art "degenerate" and artworks were confiscated left and right, burnt and declared un-German. Artists and their dealers feared for their lives and many of them were forced to flee, including Kandinsky. Unannounced house searches became a common occurance and Gabriele Münter's home was no exception.
Unbeknown to the Nazis, Münter, together with her long-term partner Johannes Eichner, built a false wall in the basement of her home in Murray, Bavaria. This wall hid her collection of art including many works by Kandinsky, other Blue Rider Expressionist artists and her own works. She was 60 at the time. Her quiet demeanor kept her under the radar screen and although the house was searched several times, the hidden works were never found. After the war, Münter donated her entire collection to the Städtische Galerie in Lenbachhaus in Munich. This donation was important in establishing and recording for posterity the legacy of the Blue Rider movement, and making sure that Hitler did not change the course of modern art.
Information gathered from the exhibition Gabriele Münter: Painting without Detours at Musée d’Art Moderne of Paris August 2025
Rose Valland
The information Rose Valland had gathered while working at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris during World War II was invaluable in recovering many stolen art works. The Jeu de Paume Museum had been turned by the Nazis into a facility of confiscated and stolen art and, under unbelievable circumstances, Rose Valland meticuosly recorded the provenance and the fate of all the works that passed through the museum. After the war, this information led to the discovery of multiple depots of looted art including the Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, where more than twenty thousand works of stolen art from private collectors and art dealers in France were stored. Click on the link below Art Hero: Rose Valland to read her amazing story.