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
color musical way
I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.
cezanne painting masters
Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.
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.
garden order doors
The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it.
feelings want opinion
...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.
feelings way my-way
I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.
faces firsts execution
From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.
simplicity essentials form
With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.
ruins painting
Never ruin a good painting with the truth.
wall two world
The wall around the window does not create two worlds.
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.
color drawing world
If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.
children artist firsts
The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.