Henri Matisse Quotes

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

Work cures everything.

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

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

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

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

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

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

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.

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

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

What I am after, above all, is expression.

I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Never ruin a good painting with the truth.

All art worthy of the name is religious.

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

The wall around the window does not create two worlds.

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

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

The truly original artist invents his own signs.

Drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses.

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

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

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

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