Henri Matisse: Expression

“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.”

Henri Matisse

Idea , Parting , Forgetting

“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.”

Henri Matisse

"Interview with Henri Matisse" by Jacques Guenne, L'Art Vivant (15 September 1925), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)
1921 - 1940
Context: 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.

Secret , Dreams , Art , Nature

“The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself. His means of expression must derive almost all of necessity from his temperament.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

“Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format – I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different dimensions, for instance on a rectangular sheet.... a drawing must have a power of expansion which can bring to life the space which surrounds it.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Life , Drawing

“What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life. I do not insist upon the details of the face. I do not care to repeat them with anatomical exactness. Though I happen to have an Italian model whose appearance at first suggests nothing but a purely animal existence, yet I succeed in picking out among the lines of his face those which suggest that deep gravity which persists in every human being.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 413

Life , Feeling , Appearance , Animals

“An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythms, by effort that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.”

Henri Matisse

In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 238
1940s

Nature , Effort

“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.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted by Theodore F. Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes

Color , Personality

“Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety: any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of the spectator.”

Henri Matisse

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Art , Feeling , Passion , Parting

“What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to proceed beyond a purely visual satisfaction such as can be procured from the mere sight of a picture. But the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete (I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), pp. 409-410

Life , Way , Feeling

“Expression, to my way of thinking, does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions – everything plays a part. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter’s disposal for the expression of his feelings”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Art , Way , Feeling , Thinking

“To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colors suit this season, I will only be inspired by the sensation that the season gives me; the icy clearness of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the tonalities of the leaves. My sensation itself may vary, the autumn may be soft and warm like a protracted summer or quite cool with a cold sky and lemon yellow trees that give a chilly impression and announce winter.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color , Autumn , Tree , Winter

“A picture must possess a real power to generate light.... for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider
posthumous quotes

Light , Time

“Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.”

Henri Matisse

As quoted by in the review of 'The Drawings of Henri Matisse', exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes

Drawing

“The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible. I put down my colors without a preconceived plan. If at the first step and perhaps without my being conscious of it one tone has particularly pleased me, more often then not when the picture is finished, I will notice that I have respected this tone while I have progressively altered and transformed the others. I discover the quality of colors in a purely instinctive way.”

Henri Matisse

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color , Way