I am using PyCharm 2016.1 and Python 2.7 on Windows 10 and imported the matplotlib module.
As the matplotlib module ist very extensive and I am relatively new to Python
In addition to Paul's answer. If you are using fig, ax = plt.subplots() , you could use figure type hint. See below example:
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
figure type hint
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt import matplotlib.axes._axes as axes import matplotlib.figure as figure fig, ax = plt.subplots() # type:figure.Figure, axes.Axes ax. fig.