Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matissewas a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth31 December 1869
CountryFrance
drawing tree copying
I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.
simplicity essentials form
With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.
color irrelevant
Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.
artist tree may
I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.
artist roles currents
The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make his own when he has grasped their deepest significance.
color trying complementary-colors
I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation
instinct lost behinds
One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.
reality precision
Precision is not reality
color splitting-up tranquility
The splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting up of form and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of the retina, but one which destroys all tranquility of surface and contour. Objects are differentiated only by the luminosity that is given them.
eye ifs
If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.
eye expression imagination
I don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person in a certain way.
feelings way my-way
I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.
children artist understanding
When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.
religious art names
All art worthy of the name is religious.