Henri Matisse Quotes
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.
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.
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.
From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.
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.
...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.
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.
A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.
The energy within you is stronger than ever for being held back, compressed, and said No to.
Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.
My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.
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.
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.
If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.
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.
With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.
Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.
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.
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.
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.
The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness.
One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.
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.
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.
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.