Matisse × Fauvism: An Art Movement Against Traditional Aesthetics

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is ranked alongside Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne as one of the most important painters of the 20th century. He was born into a family of pharmacists and grain merchants in Le Cateau, Picardy, northern France.

From 1882 to 1887, he studied law, but later gave up his legal career to start painting. He studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau at the preliminary class of the Académie Julian. In 1892, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, studying in the studio of the Symbolist painter Moreau.

Moreau's discussion of the subject matter nature of color theory in painting had a profound influence on Matisse. Moreau thought, "You can’t get beautiful colors by copying nature. The colors in a painting need to come from thinking, imagining and dreaming."

After leaving the Academy of Fine Arts, influenced by Signac's Neo-Impressionist pointillism, he created "Luxury, Tranquility, Joy" (1904). This painting got its idea from Baudelaire’s poem A Visit to the Isle of Cythera. The poem says: “There, everything is beautiful, neat, fancy, calm and full of joy.”

This painting demonstrates Matisse's immense creative ability as a colorist. The combination of pink, yellow, and blue dots exudes a sense of happiness and joy. This painting earned him the admiration of many young painters.

At first, Matisse wasn’t happy with how line and color worked together in Luxury, Serenity, Joy. Gauguin’s art made him use a decorative style. He fixed the problem between line and color by using flat color blocks, with curved, flowing lines separating them.

Matisse's The Joy of Life was finished after 1905. It shows women in an oriental style enjoying life on a beautiful seashore. A group of women dance in a circle in the distance, contrasting with the stillness of a nude in the foreground.

The concept of expressing an earthly paradise or golden age through visual art dates back to the Renaissance. Although Matisse often drew on ancient Western themes, his inspiration came from Eastern art. The painting's massive scale and bold colors mixed caused a sensation at the time.

Modern art history sees Matisse's The Joy of Life as the first great 20th-century work. It came before Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. It embodies the aesthetic concept of Fauvism, which is bold colors, simple shapes, harmonious composition and strong decorative interest.

At the 1905 Salon d'Automne, Matisse showed two other works besides this one: Open Window and Woman with a Hat. The vibrant, passionate warm colors seemed to have freed themselves from the constraints of cool colors forms, a step forward compared to Gauguin, Moreau, and Bernard.

In 1927, Matisse got a Carnegie Foundation grant. He went to the US and made the famous mural Dance. Later in life, rheumatism stopped him from painting. So he used colored paper cutouts to make decorative pictures, and created a unique style.

To study the human body, Matisse turned to sculpture. He created approximately 70 sculptures throughout his career. Sculpting figures in clay allowed him to compress solid forms onto a two-dimensional surface, achieving a holistic effect.

A representative work of art from this period is "Slave." The "slave's" pose is reminiscent of Rodin's "Walking Man." This seems to foreshadow the shift in Matisse's sculpture from traditional styles to modernity.

Matisse loved sculpture a lot. So he made Reclining Nude I in 1907. It’s based on his oil painting Blue Human Figure from then, but made into a sculpture. Later, he created works like Decorative Figure (1908), Snake Man (1909) and Crucifixion (1910). These works show how he tried new things with sculpture, and they deeply influenced modern sculpture.

Fauvism, a prominent modernist movement, faded into obscurity after 1908. But for Matisse, Fauvism wasn't the formation of his style, but rather a beginning. Braque later became a Cubism master. Rouault was asked by German Expressionists to join their exhibition, and he became one of the few great religious painters in modern art. Most Fauvist artists, however, later faded into ordinary work and obscurity.

After Fauvism, Matisse continued his exploration. Up to 1920, he used different free methods to make a new painting space. He even had a short Cubist period. His famous work Harmony in Red (1911) is different from his earlier Impressionist painting The Table. It seems to show another big change in Matisse’s art.

Matisse didn’t use traditional perspective. Instead, he used color matches and curvy lines to make a new sense of space—and a strange, exotic, mysterious new world. Between 1907 and 1910, he kept exploring how line, color and space work together. He focused on his favorite happy themes: paradise and the Golden Age. The most famous of these is "The Dance," painted in 1909, a subject previously featured in the distant view of "The Joy of Life."

　　Between 1910 and 1913, Matisse went to Spain and Morocco. He painted the brightest landscapes of his life—they show how much he loved sunlight and unusual scenery. His exploration of Cubism began during this period. 

Notable works include "Variations of a Still Life at Delhim"  (1915-1917) and "The Moroccans" (1916). Matisse's Cubist paintings never contained fragmented objects. Through these works, he trained himself in geometricizing and simplifying objects, avoiding excessive ornamentation. "The Piano Lesson" (1916-1917) is his most distinctive and successful Cubist work. Matisse employed large areas of vibrant color in an abstract arrangement. 

After World War I, Matisse produced a large number of figure paintings. These paintings either possessed a strong sense of form or were primarily based on line. In his later years, Matisse experimented with color relationships through colored paper cutouts. He employed this unique form to achieve beautiful decorative effects in book illustrations and interior decoration.

By 1950, the blocks of color in his paintings had begun to take on an independent quality. During this time, Matisse got weaker and weaker. He started using colored paper cutouts—this became his main way of creating art in his later years. Scraps of paper were first painted to his specifications, then cut out and assembled into the canvas. The vibrant color effects achieved in his later works were of great significance to younger artists painting.

About Us