Henri Matisse Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse Quotes & Sayings

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

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

What I am after, above all, is expression. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

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

A certain blue enters your soul — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

You couldn't forget [Pablo] Picasso, [Henri] Matisse and [Joan] Miro either. And it had to be, you know, at least as good or better. — Frank Stella

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

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

I have been no more than a medium, as it were. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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. — Henri Matisse

An artist is an explorer. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

Jazz is rhythm and meaning. — Henri Matisse

For whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions. — Henri Matisse

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

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. — Henri Matisse

To arrive is to be in prison. — Henri Matisse

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

Modern art spreads joy around by its color, which calms us. — Henri Matisse

Anything that is not necessary to the painting damages it. Henri Matisse — Volkmar Essers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drawing is putting a line around an idea. — Henri Matisse

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

An artist must not feel under any constraint. — Henri Matisse

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

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

I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a
painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex. - 1946 — Henri Matisse

What I dream of is an art of balance. — Henri Matisse

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

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

Creation begins with vision. — Henri Matisse

Work cures everything. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

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

Creative takes courage -Henri Matisse — J. L. Silvermist

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

Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant. — Henri Matisse

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

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul — Henri Matisse

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

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

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. — Henri Matisse

The main function of color should be to serve expression. — Henri Matisse

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

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illumination the fog that surround — Henri Matisse

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

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

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

The truly original artist invents his own signs. — Henri Matisse

The wall around the window does not create two worlds. — Henri Matisse

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

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 ... — Henri Matisse

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 ... — Henri Matisse

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. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

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

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

All art worthy of the name is religious. — Henri Matisse

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

Nothing can be accomplished without love. — Henri Matisse

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

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

Exactitude is not truth. — Henri Matisse

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things. — Henri Matisse

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

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

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

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

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

Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting. — Henri Matisse

Art is an escape from reality. — Henri Matisse

Never ruin a good painting with the truth. — Henri Matisse

Would not it be best to leave room to mystery? — Henri Matisse

Near the end of his life, Henri Matisse's preferred attire was evening wear,
by which I mean pajamas. — Holland Cotter