“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

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Henri Matisse 60

French artist 1869–1954

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