Learn About Henri Matisse in Art History. View His Art and Famous Paintings
"Stilleben, 1911 Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, 1869-1954, one of France’s famous artists in art history painted "The Joy of Life" in 1905-06. Associated with a group of
artists whose work first appeared in 1905, his work, along with others, was labeled
Fauves (wild beasts) in the same derogatory manner as the first Impressionists had been
labeled.
Matisse's style began to mature around the time of the 1905 fauvist
showing. Until this time he experimented with picture structure, copying works of art in
the Louvre. Examples of this experimentation are "La Desserte",1897
an impressionist style, and in 1901, "La
Coiffure", with influences from Cezanne and Gogan.
Henri Matisse departed from these works painting "Olive Trees,
Collioure", in 1905. He learned color could be an entity unto
itself and not used solely to describe objects in space. Art could
be about color and color relationships owing no
allegiance to the true color of an object in nature.
In 1905, Matisse painted painted one of his most famous paintings, the portrait of "Madame
Matisse", in this manner. The portrait is not an exact detail
replication of the sitter, but a portrait about pure color and color relationships. Liberty was taken when Matisse painted green line down the middle of the face
almost dividing it in half. The green line acts as a keystone for color relationships in the painting. The entire mood of the painting is effected depending on the color this line is painted, therefore "Madam
Matisse" is a study in color relationships as well as an art portrait.
Henri Matisse’s"The Joy of Life", 1905-06, is a painting that
expresses the art of Fauvism best, with it's large areas of flat bold color, the selection of heavily outlined
forms balancing the composition creating linear rhythm, and it's rather primitive
shapes and color owing little to nature.
Fauvism was not a formulaic or systematic method of painting. After about two
years, the Fauvists as an art group split in different directions based mainly on the addition
of their own stylistic experiments to the original base ideas of Fauvism.
Reducing his compositions and color to a minimum, Matisse later painted another
famous painting "The Dance" in 1907. The
picture is a flat plane as are the figural representations with no three dimensional detailing. Matisse was interested spontaneity, in color,
in lyrical lines, and minimalizing compositional characteristics to their simplest
form.
In 1916, Henri Matisse painted the "Variation on a Still Life by
de Heem" and in that same year painted "The Piano Lesson" influenced by the
the Cubist art style. Large
geometric areas of pure color set the compositional mood, line form and color are again reduced to their basic elements.
In 1917, Henri Matisse again made a stylistic change in art history. His picture plane became more
decorative with heavier applications of paint, influenced compositionally by Oriental
art. "The Moorish Screen", 1921 is an example of this
change. It differs from "The Piano Lesson" in that the large divisional areas of color are
now filled with loosely painted decorative elements.
A series of photographs taken of Henri Matisse’s “Lady in Blue”, 1937, show the develoment of a painting and how the artist responds to nature emotionally, then relaying that
emotional message in form and color on canvas. The photographs and the final
painting is an example of the mental mechanics an painter goes through day to
day reducing a composition to it's basic elements of line, form, and color.
Henri Matisse comments on his own famous paintings, "What I am after, above all, is
expression...[But}...expression does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human
face...the whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The placement of figures or
objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part”. This
seems to carry through to his later works of abstract color stencils and paper cuts. Other famous artists of the Fauvism are Andre’ Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck
To view gallery 1, Henri Matisse posters, click here.
To view gallery 2, paintings, click here.
Click on the graphics below to increase graphic sizes. At the same you time can also view an opportunity to purchase a poster or painting reproduction.
