Henri Matisse Biography

Color was something that we heavily emphasized on during our readings with paintings such as A Burial at Ornans, Vision after the Sermon, and dark paintings like Bottle and Fishes. As we have learned this semester Henri Matisse led this new and “wild” group of painters at the time who became known as the Fauves, and one of the main features of the Fauves is the emphasis on color, this could be seen in The Red Studio where the extreme use of the color red is evident. Similary, Bouquet also features a combination of contrasting colors with the addition of a limited palette. This can be seen in the thinly brushed grey strokes on the painting which in a way balances the painting and bright flowers in general. The general size of the painting is 139.7 x 102.2 cm (San Diego Museum of Art) and this definitely has a significance to the way the painting is decorated in this large and still life frame. The painting gets its roots from the period in which it was created in and that was during the period of World War I. And as we know from the book Matisse sort of retreated to the country side and began painting decorative paintings that were very naturalistic and far-removed in contrast to what was going on during the time, and this painting was the

For Henri Matisse, the scandal was just another dark episode in a painful struggle. Born in Bohain, a poor unlovely, industrial town in northern France, Henri was already a lawyer when he dismayed his working-class parents by deciding that art was his life's true calling. Painting never came easily to Matisse; he studied constantly. When he failed to break into the prestigious mainstream of French art, his family labeled him an embarrassment with no talent. But Henri, as uncertain and depressed as he was, had bigger worries than rejection. By 1905, he was 35, a married man with three children -and he was broke.

homage to him a year later after his death. As such, many of the young artists in Paris at that time

Henri Matisse: born 1869- Died 1954, he was a French painter involved in Fauvism group living throw both World Wars. He expressed harmony in colour and composition. He dabbled in scientific approach of Paul Signac’s pointillist style before lending in Favism . His subject matter was often interior scenes, land scapes, still life’s and portraitures. He preferred a bright colours pallet and a light hearted approach to his works. Red Room, 1908 is a reflection of harmony of vivid primary colours with touches of tertiary colours. The contrast of toyal blue in the whimsical pattern and crimson red of the table cloths which blends into the walls of the room. Matisse influences for this decorative style can be linked to he’s love of Persian miniatures.

Claude Monet had a different style of painting in the 1800’s. He was a French painter who shed a whole new light on the way painting could be done; he also was a lead figure in the impressionist movement. To this day, Monet made such a huge impact on the world, that you can find his paintings in museums across the globe!

figures. The most noticeable breaking away that Matisse does here is the distinctly Fauvist use of color. Bright, vibrant colors are used for the natural setting instead of the blues and grays Cézanne used. There is also a total lack of perspective. Where Cézanne’s figures seem mostly believable in size, Matisse’s figures vary in size without regard for

Matisse, considered the unofficial leader of the beasts of fauves, for there untraditional use of colors, main goals was to express. From the positive affects of painting after being diagnosed, then trained under symbolist painter Monderu. Studying the techniques of the past impressionist, in the effort to find harmony through the medium of art. By creating harmony between composition and color, that creates a positive emotion toward the viewer, not generated by the subject. Not desiring physical representation of meaning from the subject, but from the elements and how they exist together, with direct effect on viewers. Developing from an allegedly untamed style, a simpler form of expression began, unlike the profaned style.

Matisse is one of the best artists at surrounding a background around the viewer. His paintings are the most realistic compared to other current artists, as he uses a feel of a soft wind as a landscape and the smell of fresh citrus fruits to compose his still life arts. "The Casbah Gate" contains vivid colors that describe a gate.

By carefully studying and focusing on technique, both Degas’ soft pastel drawing “The Large Green Dancers” and Boucher’s “Young Country Girl Dancing” utilized limited color palettes, the generation of movement, and reflection of light to reveal an impression of women perceived by the artist.

The first of the three, and my personal favorite, is “Pont Saint-Michel” by Matisse. This piece is very simple, yet has a calming and elegant color scheme and medium. This oil on canvas cityscape uses rough brushstrokes and very few exact lines in order to show an inexact representation of the bridge and its surrounding buildings. The buildings have very little true form, and seem to blend into one another. Their colors are mostly primary, with reds, yellows, and blues standing out the most. These aspects all intertwine in order to show an imperfect representation of a view that Matisse saw nearly every day out of his window. Since Matisse painted this scene multiple times throughout the years that he lived in this building, the transformation in his art styles is apparent. Therefore, this painting shows his transition toward a Fauve composition, since he uses

I am intrigued by the way that artists reflect their emotion by the use of colour. Therefore I have decided to focus on Picasso, Soutine and Matisse. I am going to delve into their frame of mind and attempt to unpick their emotions and link them to how each artist expresses that feeling by using a specific palette of colour. I am fascinated by how the chosen artists may go through similar emotions but reflect these emotions in a completely different way through personal connotations to colour. For example Picasso goes through many periods but one of his main periods was the blue period where he uses blue to link to the fact that he is depressed. This relationship between the artist’s deeper feelings and how they portray this through the expression of colour will be the main focus of this essay. I will use specific

First impressions of Piet Mondrian’s Composition II with Red Blue and Yellow generally identify the art as shapes with color. However, there is much meaning behind the abstract work of art. Created in 1930 on a 46x46cm canvas, the oil painting portrays thick, black brushwork separating different figures of rectangles. It was made on the foundation of Neo-Plasticism, an artistic movement at that time focusing on the most basic, abstract elements of painting. The artist’s intended effect, harmonious tension, is well achieved through the contrast between the colored rectangles and black lines, and perspective.

Upon recurring that midsummer, Matisse decorated two styles of The Young Sailor (1999.363.41) in which he swapped the first style’s naturally contoured facial structures with an additional loosely abstract appearance significant of a concealment. At about the same time, Picasso finished his picture of the American immigrant writer Gertrude Stein (47.106), concluding her appearance after numerous repainting’s in the icy, masklike style of ancient sculptural statues from his intuitive Iberia (Murrell, Denise. “African Influences in Modern Art)

Consequently, during the 1910’s, Kupka explored composition of color/geometric harmony and contrast through abstraction, often conveying this with musical imagery in his titling such as Nocturne, 1910 [Fig. 1], Fugue in Red and Blue, 1909-1912 [Fig. 2], and Solo of a Brown Line, 1912-1913 [Fig. 3]. Nocturne, although completed two years before the term “orphism” was applied to art, shows Kupka’s early development of abstraction. “Nocturnes” in both music and art are romantic representations of night scenes, where here [Fig. 1] the harmony of color and play of light with these vertical rectangular planes allude to the color palette typically associated with night, however the arrangement has no pictorial resemblance to a landscape or cityscape. Kupka had already been concerned with the use of color as an abstract element in earlier works and most notably a work completed in the same year Yellow Scale which employs the same use of vertical panels. The non-figural nature of these vertical paintings, specifically Nocturne, allows the brilliant color to serve as the aesthetic charm of the painting, but pattern and line composition are crucial elements that seem to take a back seat in this work.

Matisse's technique was neither cubist (such from the Synthetic collage phase during the period of 1911-16) nor abstract, although they are treated as musical compositions, much in the way that Kandinsky produced in his series of improvisations. Matisse described his works as "improvisations in colour and rhythm" like those of Louis Armstrong. Jazz music was a big influence in his découpages. Matisse believed that "when I put colours together they have to join in a living chord or harmony of colour, like a musical chord or harmony". "Jazz" album (published in 1947) was one of the first extraordinary results of découpages technique. It