I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me. — Henri Matisse Artist Copy Share Image
When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky. — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure. — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling. — Henri Matisse Expression Copy Share Image
You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right… — Henri Matisse Artist Copy Share Image
A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject. — Henri Matisse Artist Copy Share Image
From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of… — Henri Matisse Contemplation Copy Share Image
With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials. — Henri Matisse Abstraction Copy Share Image
The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness. — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of… — Henri Matisse Choices Copy Share Image
Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct. — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more… — Henri Matisse Artist Copy Share Image
When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to… — Henri Matisse Character Copy Share Image
Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it;… — Henri Matisse Bored Copy Share Image
What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
Love wants to rise, not to be held down by anything base... He who loves flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free… — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
There are wonderful things in real jazz, the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience. — Henri Matisse Improvisation Copy Share Image
It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the… — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
Better late than never is poor consolation for the man who has lost the opportunity of a lifetime — Henri Matisse Lost opportunity Copy Share Image
My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend… — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who… — Henri Matisse Action Copy Share Image
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within… — Henri Matisse Desire Copy Share Image
The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond… — Henri Matisse Choices Copy Share Image
...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its… — Henri Matisse Delusion Copy Share Image
Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain. — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see… — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave. — Henri Matisse Artist Copy Share Image
An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone. — Henri Matisse Copy Share Image
Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances. — Henri Matisse Abstraction Copy Share Image
There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience. — Henri Matisse Audience Copy Share Image
The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language… — Henri Matisse Art Copy Share Image
Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they… — Henri Matisse Age Copy Share Image
I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been… — Henri Matisse Aliens Copy Share Image
Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods. — Henri Matisse Artist Copy Share Image
