Henri Matisse

Reflection on Matisse Henri Matisse was born in 1869, the year the Cutty Sark was launched. The year he died, 1954, the first hydrogen bomb exploded at Bikini Atoll. Matisse lived through some of the most traumatic political events, worst wars, greatest slaughters, and the most demented rivalries of ideology. Yet, this did not affect his artwork. He never express his political opinion or experiences living throughout the horror of the 20th century, instead his painting were “the equivalent of an ideal place, sealed away from the assaults and erosions of history” ( Hughes, p.134). Matisse was inspired by Manet and Cezanne, and even kept a small Cezanne Bathers as his talisman. At around 1904 he got interested in the coloured dots of Seurat’s…

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Two influential artists, famous for works of still life; Willem Kalf and Henri Matisse are both considered masters of still life and highly regarded artists, however their artistic styles are of significant difference, both approaching still life with their own perspective and take. Both artists depict still life, and both use oil paint on canvas as their medium. Their art making practises echo each other however their works depict very little similarity. While…

earlier Fauve canvases where color relates directly to emotional expression and not formal needs of the plane or reality of nature. Henri Matisse completed what is considered one of his greatest Fauve paintings in 1906, the Bonheur de Vivre which is the “Joy of Life”. Matisse’ work is said to represent similar qualities to Cezanne, for example they both create the landscape to function as a stage. Also, they both like to unify the figure and the landscape. While each artist has their own style…

Art is based on influences and creative works, having the ability to visualize outside influences while manipulating them in the artist’s own imagination is truly stunning. Henri Matisse along with Pablo Picasso are few of many that could use that outside “influence” and depict it in a beautiful and subtle way. African sculptures and tribal masks caused a vast effect on both artists, and so each artist adopted the use of this non-Western art form in different ways. African art was introduced to…

A founding member of Fauvism, Andre Derain is known for his vibrantly colored paintings and fauvist style. Early in his career Derain worked closely with fellow Fauvist such as Henri Matisse, who helped convince Derain’s family to let him pursue a career in painting. Andre Derain’s painting “The Trees” is a great representation of the artist’s style and use of Fauvism. The medium of this painting is oil on canvas and is 59.4 centimeters in length by 72.4 centimeters in width, “The Trees” was…

art is used to express ideas of beauty. It soon became a site to address the immediate changes in the modern industrial world, representing the female nude as a vessel to address the urban modernization of the roles of women. The portrayal of the female nude in Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River uses the nude to express his frustrations with the Battle of Verdun. Initially, it was conceived in 1909 as a scene of arcadian leisure, but then years later in Morocco, it was transformed into a…

The role of depth in inciting the other senses has been discussed, but what if there was no depth and the entire composition was as flat as it could be. Flatness relieves a painting of the sculptural effect, but does it only present a space inhabitable to man? As far as this assessment is accurate, Greenberg fails to factor in what type of space is represented in flatness. Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio is a very flat painting, with everything in two dimensions. This painting agrees with in the…

driving the artist’s subjective emotional state. Rather than using idealized forms or classical codes, Fauvists believed that color had a spiritual quality that linked directly to the viewer’s emotional experience. This radical idea revealed that color could be used symbolically, breaking its previously established role as a descriptive element (MacTaggart, 2007). When asked to define Fauvism, Maurice de Vlaminck replied, “What is Fauvism? It is me; it was my style... my way of combined revolt…

Henri Matisse painted Bonheur de Vivre (c. 1905-1906) within the introductory period of radically charged, color-based fauvist work. The color in Bonheur de Vivre easily conveys a sense of joy present in a free-natured romp through nature the painting attempts to emulate. The painting contains sixteen feminine-coded human figures sitting in a hyper-colored field. Instead of a contemporary scene, trees enclose a mythic clearing. This deifies these figures as they lounge nude in multicolored…

Henri Matisse was a revolutionary and influential artist of the early 20th century, best known for his expressive color and form of his Fauvist style. Henri Matisse was born December 31, 1869, in Le Cateau in northern France. During a 6 decade career, he worked in all media, from painting to sculpture to printmaking. Although his subjects were traditional—nudes, figures in landscapes, portraits, interior views—his revolutionary use of brilliant color and exaggerated form to express emotion made…