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
mean drawing color
Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.
light color feels
It is with color that you render light, though you must also feel this light, have it within yourself.
music jazz wonderful
There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.
prison
To arrive is to be in prison.
art reality stronger
In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.
color choices feelings
My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.
tree intuition branches
Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.
mediums has-beens
I have been no more than a medium, as it were.
influence sincerity cowardice
For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.
character young claws
A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.
crazy curves
My curves are not crazy.
artist self discovery
An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.
eye artist effort
Everything that we see in our daily lives is more or less distorted by acquired habits and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters and magazines present us every day with a flood of ready-made images which are to the eye what prejudices are to the mind. The effort to see things without distortion demands a kind of courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time.
art prison arrivals
Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.