Henri Matisse

The above image was painted by Andre Derain when he and his fellow "fauve" decided to paint portraits of each other in 1905. The style he used was called "fauvism".  As you can see he used non realistic colors and applied them in small separate brush strokes. It was another technique to show off light and shade. If you're wondering who the "fauve" or "wild beast" in the picture is, it was the person who pushed "fauvism" to the forefront, Mr. Henri Matisse. Although fauvism had a short lived life in the beginning of the twentieth century, it was pivotal to the rise of expressionism in the last century.

Let me rewind back a little bit and make sense of everything I just mentioned. In 1905, Henri Matisse and his associates exhibited their work at the Salon de Automne. Without a sense of naturalism or reference to realistic colors, two of Matisse's work of arts drew a lot of attention. His fellow "fauves" and him received that name because  a critic referred to their work as something like "wild beasts". Matisse was also rewarded with the criticism, " A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public", by critic Camille Mauclair. His famous piece(shown below), "Woman with a Hat" received most of the attacks.

No one might have known then, but it was actually, in today's term's, good press. A year before this incident, Matisse wasn't getting recognized, but in 1905 he definitely got was he was bargaining for. Henri Matisse's life was out of the box like his art work.  Born on December 31st, 1869, he wasn't someone that started doing art as a little boy and grew up into the artist he was. He had actually studied law in Paris and was on his way to becoming a lawyer when he was hit with appendicitis. During his recovery from the illness his mother gave him some art supplies. He saw art it as a sort of paradise and decided to go back to Paris to study it. Although he didn't get a good reception at first, he, along with his close friend and rival Pablo Picasso became one of the pioneers of modern art. His aggressive strokes and bold use of color might have earn him much criticism, but it definitely set him apart from the other artists of his time. Even though Fauvism didn't last  around more than a decade, you can see Matisse's influence in many artist's work from the past and present. I would even like to say future for that matter. It took a few decades before receiving public acceptance and  creative freedom, but his influence from color and light carried him to continue to be innovative and creative all types of different works of art.

Unlike his friend Picasso's imaginative influences, Matisse painted mostly about nature, but what set his work apart from the other ways art was being done was how unrealistic his work was. He wasn't afraid to paint for the colors rather than the technical aspects of painting. He was also finding new ways and techniques to put an image together. For example, he created the style called  "pointillism", where he would use bright, unmixed colors and create a picture with dots or strokes. With a mind like Matisse's of course he couldn't just limit himself to only painting. He also worked with lithographs, and sculpted. Here's one of his lithograph pieces he did in 1954 before he passed away.

                                                This piece was called the Creole Dancer!

Before this artist research on Henri Matisse, I can honestly say I had only came across his name once before, but now I feel if I come across his work I'll be able to place a bet that it's his work. I don't think art today would be art as we know it if it wasn't for him. I think that if he never existed or  never did art that today we would live in a world where art had rules and guidelines. Today we can be expressive and create what we feel because of past artists such as Mr. Matisse. I understand why he is considered the most important French artist of the twentieth century because he broke the norm with how he painted. He might have suffered the consequences of being different in a time where everyone was setting the foundation to creativity, but he was a big part of the puzzle and the art world would be a half empty cup without him. I feel as if my research on Henri Matisse has only begun.