Henri Matisse Quotes:

I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.

Topics: Giving, Feelings, May

The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.

Topics: Prayer, Mind, Essentials

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

source: - Henri Matisse (1992). “Jazz”, George Braziller

Topics: Positive, Beautiful, Art, Inspirational Flower, Flowering

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

Topics: Inspirational, Happiness, Work, Illuminating

Creativity takes courage.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

My pictures are made up of four or five colors that collide with one another…

Topics: Color, Four, Made, Collide

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.

Topics: Views, Sky, Tree

Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.

Topics: Art, Should, Armchairs

Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.

Topics: Brother, Believe, Men

He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.

Topics: Love, Running, Freedom

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

Topics: Art, Emotional, Feelings, Fine Arts, Impressionism

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Topics: Art, Artist, Differences, Painting And Art, Painting Art

To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.

Topics: Courage, Optimistic, Looks

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

Topics: Ideas, Drawing, Lines

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

Topics: Art, Mind, Goldfish

Nothing can be accomplished without love.

Topics: Accomplished

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Topics: Funny, Art, Drawing, Expressive, Exactitude

It has always bothered me that I don't paint like everyone else

Topics: Paint, Bothered

Work cures everything.

Topics: Art, Cures

It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.

Topics: Beautiful, Art, Color, Cacophony

Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.

Topics: Art, Cutting, Color

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

Topics: Color, Energy, Witchcraft

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.

Topics: Feelings, Way, My Way

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.

Topics: Feelings, Want, Opinion

Above all, an artist must never be too easily satisfied with what he has done...

Topics: Artist, Done, Satisfaction

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

Topics: Art, Inspiration, Waiting

Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.

Topics: Art, Reality, Resistance, Truth And Reality

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.211, Univ of California Press

Topics: Blue, Blood, Color, Blood Pressure

When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.

Topics: Beauty, Artist, Drawing

Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.

Topics: Artist, Light, Color, Light And Color

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.177, Univ of California Press

Topics: Color

I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.

Topics: Fetch, Saws, Embarrassed, High Prices

If it is practiced by a man of taste, the photograph will have the appearance of art (but) the photographer must...intervene as little as possible, so as not to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses.

Topics: Photography, Art, Men

Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?

Topics: Art, Rooms, Mystery

It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.

Topics: Dream, Spiritual, Art, Armchairs, Attention Seeking

Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.

Topics: Effort, Creative

What I am after, above all, is expression.

Topics: Expression

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.

Topics: Art, Want, Condensation

When you're out of willpower you call on stubbornness, that's the trick.

Topics: Funny Inspirational, Willpower, Stubbornness

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

Topics: Art, Struggle, Wages

The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.

Topics: Art, Special, Quality

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

source: - Romare Bearden (2003). “The Art of Romare Bearden”, Harry N Abrams Incorporated

Topics: Spring, Artist, Lightning, Bolts

From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.

Topics: Hands, Color, Moments

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

Topics: Cutting, Wish, Tongue

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

Topics: Feelings, Way, Painting

Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance.

Topics: Art, Color, Importance, Colors Of Life

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

Topics: Color, Red

You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.

Topics: Expression, Ideas, Emotion

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Topics: Inspirational, Music, Jazz

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Topics: Art, Flower, Rose, Exactitude, White Rose

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

Topics: Art, Vision, World, Freshness

In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.

Topics: Able, Influence, Walks, Endings Being New Beginnings

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

Topics: Past, Delight, Growing

Another word for creativity is courage.

Topics: Courage, Creativity, Design, Hope Courage

You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.

Topics: Art, Love Is, Alaska, Naivete

I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.

Topics: Buddhist, Art, Prayer, Frame Of Mind

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.

Topics: Artist, Effort, Mastery, Nature And Art

In love, the one who runs away is the winner.

Topics: Love, Running, Running Away

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

Topics: Mean, Artist, Expression, Personal Expression, Young Artists

After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.

Topics: Wall, Struggle, Hard Work

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Topics: Dream, Art, Balance, Armchairs, Subject Matter

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure.

Topics: Art, Landscape, Figures, Still Life

Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.

Topics: Color, Feelings, Looks

Creation begins with vision.

Topics: Vision, Creation

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

Topics: Art, Real, Light, Real Power

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

Topics: Past, Digging, Generations, Impressionism, Past Generations

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.

Topics: Art, Style, Etc, Exactitude

There are flowers everywhere, for those who bother to look.

Topics: Flower, Positive Thinking, Looks

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Topics: Dream, Depressing, Art

Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.

Topics: Doe, Lines, One Line

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Topics: Art, Paint, Art Education, Not Bothered, Artists And Life

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

Topics: Art, Soul, Newspapers, Impressionists, Impressionism

The energy within you is stronger than ever for being held back, compressed, and said No to ...

Topics: Stronger, Energy, Said, Stronger Than Ever

There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence.

Topics: Essence, Painting, Form

I dream of an art of balance, of quietness, something analogous to a good armchair.

Topics: Dream, Art, Balance, Armchairs

The truly original artist invents his own signs.

Topics: Artist

Color was not given to us in order that we imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.

Topics: Order, Color, Emotion

I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.

Topics: Country, Expression, Color

Simple colours can affect the intimate feelings with all the more force because they are simple.

Topics: Simple, Color, Rainbow

I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Topics: Art, Taken, Expression, Rancor

I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been no more than a medium as it were.

Topics: Today, Normal, Aliens

Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.

Topics: Quiet, Paint, Starting

A certain blue enters your soul

Topics: Blue, Soul, Certain

Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.

Topics: Art, Artist, Prison, Arrivals

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.

Topics: Artistic, Should, Impress

All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.

Topics: Art, Mind, Elements, Detrimental, Superfluous

The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it.

Topics: Peculiar, Harmony, Invention

Truly, I'm not joking when I thank my lucky stars for the awful operation I had, since it has made me young again and philosophical which means that I don't want to fritter away the new lease on life I've been given.

Topics: Stars, Philosophical, Mean, Lucky Star, Lease

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

Topics: Expression, Gains, Clarity

Love wants to rise, not to be held down by anything base... He who loves flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back. Derive happiness from yourself, from a good day's work, from the clearing that it makes in the fog that surrounds us.

Topics: Running, Good Day, Fog

Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.

Topics: Cezanne, Painting, Masters

I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation

Topics: Color, Trying, Complementary Colors

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man...

Topics: Men, Artist, Imagination

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.

Topics: Garden, Doors, Order

Exactitude is not truth. [Fr., L'exactitude n'est pas la verite.]

Topics: Truth, Exactitude

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.

Topics: Children, Artist, Firsts

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.

Topics: Color, Musical, Way, Musical Composition

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.

Topics: Drawing, Tree, Copying, Common Language

The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort.

Topics: Artist, Effort, Creative

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Topics: Artist, Hatred, Soul

From Bonheur de Vivre - I was thirty-five then - to this cut-out - I am eighty-two - I have not changed; not in the way my friends mean who want to compliment me, no matter what, on my good health, but because all this time I have looked for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means...

Topics: Mean, Cutting, Two, Eighty

Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they wanted to safeguard their freedom.

Topics: Change, Art, Names, Japanese Art

A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing.

Topics: Simple, Drawing, Charcoal

Put a colour upon a canvas - it not only colours with that colour the part of the canvas to which the colour has been applied, but it also colours the surrounding space with the complementary.

Topics: Space, Canvas, Colour

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

Topics: Art, Use, Elements, Arranging

Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole...

Topics: House, Together, Fit, Carpenter

Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

Topics: Expression, Drawing, Paper, Format

Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use.

Topics: Art, Taken, Needs

The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

Topics: Courage, Artist, Effort

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.

Topics: Artist, Roles, Currents

Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.

Topics: Creativity, Independent, Play

Creativity takes cougrage

Topics: Art, Creativity

When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would. But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.

Topics: Looks, Tomatoes, Way

When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.

Topics: Art, Blue, Sky

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

Topics: Simple, Trying, Be Good

Art is an escape from reality.

Topics: Art, Reality, Art Is

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.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.218, Univ of California Press

Topics: Eye, Artist, Effort, Distortion

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.

Topics: Mean, Blue, Color

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

Topics: Queens, Black And White, Color, Black Is Beautiful

If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.

Topics: Eye, Ifs

Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.

Topics: Color, Irrelevant

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.

Topics: Artist, Discovery, Self

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.41, Univ of California Press

Topics: Color, Choices, Feelings, Complementary Colors, Scientific Theory

Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.

Topics: Two, Balance, Three, Three Dimensions

My curves are not crazy.

Topics: Crazy, Curves

Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.

Topics: Mean, Exercise, Drawing, Dexterity

It is with color that you render light, though you must also feel this light, have it within yourself.

Topics: Light, Color, Feels

Colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to preserve, just as in music you try to preserve sounds. It is a question of organization, of finding the arrangement that will keep the beauty and freshness of the colour

source: - Volkmar Essers, Henri Matisse (1993). “Matisse”, Taschen

Topics: Organization, Trying, Sound

With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.

source: - Henri Matisse (2011). “Matisse: Drawing Life”, Queensland Art Gallery

Topics: Simplicity, Essentials, Form, Completeness

When you're out of will power you call on stubbornness, that's the trick.

source: - "Matisse on art".

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Willpower

Never ruin a good painting with the truth.

Topics: Ruins, Painting

To arrive is to be in prison.

Topics: Prison

Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, Univ of California Press

Topics: Dream, Art, Mean, Exactitude

The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.218, Univ of California Press

Topics: Children, Artist, Looks

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.105, Univ of California Press

Topics: Art, Understanding, Painting

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.

Topics: Eye, Expression, Imagination

Truth and reality in art begin at the point where the artist ceases to understand what he is doing and capable of doing - yet feels in himself a force that becomes steadily stronger... and more concentrated.

source: - Hayward Gallery, Henri Matisse, Arts Council of Great Britain (1968). “Matisse: 1869-1954. A retrospective exhibition”

Topics: Art, Reality, Stronger, Truth And Reality

I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

Topics: Light, Effort, Cost

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.11, Univ of California Press

Topics: Happiness, Light, People, Matisse, Dispassionate

The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.107, Univ of California Press

Topics: Intuition, Permit, Certain

Hatred is a parasite that devours all. One doesn't build upon hatred, but upon love.

source: - Henri Matisse (1977). “Henri Matisse Paper Cut-outs: National Gallery of Art Color Slide Program”

Topics: Hatred, Parasites

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Topics: Art, Giving, Greater

When I started to paint I felt transported into a kind of paradise... In everyday life I was usually bored and vexed... Starting to paint I felt gloriously free.

Topics: Freedom, Bored, Everyday

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.

Topics: Color, Drawing, World

It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.

Topics: Art, Mistake, Creativity

You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

Topics: Cutting, Decision, Want

A painting in an interior spreads joy around it by the colors, which calm us.

source: - "Matisse on Art".

Topics: Art, Color, Joy, Modern Art

There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair.

Topics: Emotional, Despair, Enthusiasm

Drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses.

source: - "Minnesota celebrates Matisse".

Topics: Color, Drawing, Spirit

The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.

source: - Henri Matisse, Susan Lambert, Victoria and Albert Museum (1981). “Matisse lithographs”

Topics: Play, Space, Empty, Empty Space

All art worthy of the name is religious.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

Topics: Religious, Art, Names

All my efforts go into creating an art that can be understood by everyone.

Topics: Art, Creating, Effort

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.156, Univ of California Press

Topics: Mean, Color, Drawing

One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.

Topics: Instinct, Lost, Behinds, Freshness

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

Topics: Work Out, Different, Painting, Redos, Routes

To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

Topics: Ideas, Drawing, Precision, Precise

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

Topics: Freedom, Artist, Feels

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.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

Topics: Children, Artist, Understanding

I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.81, Univ of California Press

Topics: Independent, Feelings, Individuality

I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.

Topics: Thinking, Joy, Suffering, Borrowed Time

The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.149, Univ of California Press

Topics: Expression, Feelings, Imitation

One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.107, Univ of California Press

Topics: Work, Creativity, Conscious

Photographs will always be impressive because they show us nature, and all artists will find in them a world of sensations. The photographer must therefore intervene as little as possible, so as not to cause photography to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses, notwithstanding its defects.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.44, Univ of California Press

Topics: Photography, Artist, World

A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.

Topics: Character, Order, Risk, Insisting, Rendering

...I am driven on by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.132, Univ of California Press

Topics: Art, Ideas, Driven

The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.

Topics: Art, Language, Importance

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

source: - Margrit Hahnloser-Ingold, Henri Matisse (1987). “Matisse, the graphic work”, Rizzoli International Publications

Topics: Influence, Sincerity, Cowardice, Avoided

What matters most to me? To work with my model until I have it enough in me to be able to improvise, to let my hand run free.

Topics: Running, What Matters, Hands

My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model.

Topics: Figures, Theme, Extras

Precision is not reality

Topics: Reality, Precision

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.

source: - Henri Matisse (1992). “Jazz”, George Braziller

Topics: Art, Passion, Reality, Truth And Reality

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.217, Univ of California Press

Topics: Art, Artist, Creation

Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

source: - "The Cut-Outs of Henri Matisse".

Topics: Art, Cutting, Color, Carving

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.

Topics: Artist, Tree, May

The wall around the window does not create two worlds.

source: - Margrit Hahnloser-Ingold, Henri Matisse (1987). “Matisse, the graphic work”, Rizzoli International Publications

Topics: Wall, Two, Doe, Two Worlds

The Barnes Foundation is the only sane place to see art in America.

Topics: Art, America, Foundation

A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter.

source: - "Artists on Art - from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, London, p. 413, 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), 1972.

Topics: Art, Matter, Beholder

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.

Topics: Color, Splitting Up, Tranquility, Impressionists

The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.

source: - "Matisse on Art".

Topics: Expression, Color, Should

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

source: - "Artists on Art - from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, London, p. 410, 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), 1972.

Topics: Bored, Mind, Finishing

An artist who wants to transpose a composition onto a larger canvas must conceive it over again in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just fill in the squares into which he has divided his canvas.

source: - Henri Matisse, Susan Lambert, Victoria and Albert Museum (1981). “Matisse lithographs”

Topics: Character, Artist, Squares

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.

Topics: Character, Young, Claws, Young Women

The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual but also from a whole acquired force, the civilization which precedes us. One cannot do just anything. A talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. If he only used his gifts, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us.

source: - Hayward Gallery, Henri Matisse, Arts Council of Great Britain (1968). “Matisse: 1869-1954. A retrospective exhibition”

Topics: Art, Civilization, Development

From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

Topics: Portraits, Faces, Firsts, Guide Me

A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.

Topics: Unique, Mind, Events

It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.

Topics: Religious, Feelings, Humanity

The living model, the naked body of a woman, is the privileged seat of feeling, but also of questioning... The model must mark you, awaken in you an emotion which you seek in turn to express.

Topics: Beauty, Feelings, Naked, Seats

If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone.

Topics: Stories, Written, Ifs

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

Topics: Tree, Intuition, Natural Instinct, Instinct Intuition, Prunes

The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.

Topics: Writing, Use, Would Be

Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Topics: Art, Giving, Aristocracy

Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share.

source: - "Notes d'un Peintre". "La Grande Revue", as translated by Jack Flam in "Matisse on Art" (1995), December 25, 1908.

Topics: Passion, Glowing, Expression

A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres.

source: - Henri Matisse (1977). “Henri Matisse Paper Cut-outs: National Gallery of Art Color Slide Program”

Topics: Color, Tone, Timbre

Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive.

Topics: Passion, Expression, Faces, Human Faces

The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.

source: - Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.177, Univ of California Press

Topics: Color, Rainbow, Choices

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Topics: Music, Jazz, Wonderful