Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are arguably the two greatest artists of the 20th century. Now, for the first time, 144 paintings, sculptures and cut-outs by these two renowned artists are presented side-by-side in the celebrated exhibit "Matisse Picasso." The show has already received rave reviews in London and Paris and is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City until May 19 for its only show in the US. Professor Nancy Scott (FA), who took her Picasso Matisse art history class to the exhibit, called the show, "a world-class gathering of works of art. It's an aesthetic pleasure to stand in the middle of intersecting galleries and look across to see works of art that speak to each other."Picasso once said, "You have got to be able to picture side by side everything Matisse and I were doing at the time." Perhaps such is the reason exhibit curators chose to frequently place a Matisse next to a Picasso, as if it was a boxing match between the artistic works. Such pairings emphasize how Matisse and Picasso continually adapted their personal creative approaches in response to the other's stylistic experiments in modern art.

The first coupling of works in the exhibit are Matisse's "Marguerite" of 1906 and Picasso's "Pitcher, Bowl, and Lemon" of 1907, the only pair of paintings that the artists chose to exchange during their competitive acquaintance. Both Matisse and Picasso chose a more mediocre work by the other most likely to outwardly deny the other's overall creative talent and brilliant, experimental nature in art. This first pairing of Matisse/Picasso works set the competitive tone for the entire exhibit where the artists would continually be responding to each other's works and evolving styles.

One of the greatest treats of the show is viewing Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon" of 1907, which rarely travels in art shows. Matisse's leisurely, calm "Bathers with a Turtle" of 1908 is his response to "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon," and is displayed to the right of its Picasso counterpart. In this comparison between two of the artists' most famous pieces, Picasso attacks traditional ideas of feminine beauty while Matisse responds by re-affirming his own position of the idealized female nude.

A large part of the show is also devoted to exploring the cubist dialogue between the two artists, as witnessed in the pairing of Matisse's "The Piano Lesson" of 1916 and Picasso's "Man Leaning on a Table." Both artists chose to explore and interpret aspects of each other's styles during this period of their competitive friendship, as Picasso wrote "No one has ever looked at Matisse's paintings more carefully than I, and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he."

The exhibit continues to chronicle the rivalry between Matisse and Picasso even after Matisse's move to Nice and Picasso's to Paris where they saw less of each other, making the artistic connections between them more difficult to uncover. Yet later cut-out pieces by both artists share a remarkable similarity in style. The show goes on to examine a few works done by Picasso after Matisse's death in November of 1953. In his "Women of Algier's, after Delacroix" of 1955, Picasso keeps his rival's memory by repeating several of Matisse's figures in the painting.

The exhibit concludes in a back room where only two paintings hang, Matisse's "The Violinist" of 1918 and Picasso's "Shadow" from 1953. The final pairing emphasizes the idea repeated through out the show that although Matisse and Picasso were often stylistically at odds, the two's work still remained deeply interwoven. Matisse wrote of his relationship with Picasso, "We must talk to each other as much as we can. When one of us dies, there will be some things that the other will never be able to talk of with anyone else."

The rivalry between the colorist Matisse and the draftsman Picasso drove each artist to overcome conventional standards of line, color, and space in art and to continue to experiment with new visions of portraying the both emotional and tangible worlds. "Matisse Picasso" is a must-see if you are anywhere in the New York area, for it is an extraordinary once in a lifetime opportunity to see rare, famous pieces by two of the 20th Century's most creative minds as well as to study the artistic competition that redefined modern art.