Henri Matisse Quotes - Page 3

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

Henri Matisse

Simplicity, Essentials, Form

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

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

Henri Matisse

Inspirational, Funny, Willpower

"Matisse on art".

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

Henri Matisse

Love, Running, Running Away

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

Henri Matisse

Color, Four, Made

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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

Beautiful, Art, Color

Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.216, Univ of California Press

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The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.

Henri Matisse

Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

"Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & Present". Book by Clint Brown (p. 62_, 1998.

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

Henri Matisse

Art, Should, Armchairs

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To arrive is to be in prison.

Henri Matisse

Prison

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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.

Henri Matisse

Dream, Art, Mean

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

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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.

Henri Matisse

Children, Artist, Looks

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

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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.

Henri Matisse

Essence, Painting, Form

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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.

Henri Matisse

Eye, Expression, Imagination

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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.

Henri Matisse

Art, Understanding, Painting

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

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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.

Henri Matisse

Art, Reality, Stronger

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

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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.

Henri Matisse

Light, Effort, Cost

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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.

Henri Matisse

Art, Flower, Rose

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An artist is an explorer.

Henri Matisse

Artist, Explorers

Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.162, Univ of California Press

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Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

Henri Matisse

Art, Soul, Newspapers

"Matisse". Book by Pierre Schneider, 1984.

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I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation

Henri Matisse

Color, Trying, Complementary Colors

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

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

Henri Matisse

Paint, Bothered

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

Henri Matisse

Artist, Done, Satisfaction

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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.

Henri Matisse

Color, Musical, Way

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

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

Henri Matisse

Simple, Color, Rainbow

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

Henri Matisse

Art, Struggle, Wages

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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.

Henri Matisse

Happiness, Light, People

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

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Born: December 31, 1869
Died: November 3, 1954
Occupation: Artist
Cite this Page: Citation

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