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Henri Matisse Quotes

French painter and sculptor (d. 1954), Birth: 31-12-1869 Henri Matisse Quotes
1.
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
Henri Matisse

There are always beauty to be discovered by the observant eye.
2.
Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.
Henri Matisse

Innovative individuals are inquisitive, pliable, and autonomous with an immense zest for life and a fondness for amusement.
3.
Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.
Henri Matisse

Begin without delay; creativity will arrive during the process.
4.
Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.
Henri Matisse

5.
The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.
Henri Matisse

Similar Authors: Winston Churchill Francis Bacon John Ruskin Leonardo da Vinci William Blake Henry Miller Pablo Picasso Vincent Van Gogh Ai Weiwei Andy Warhol Alan Moore David Hockney Samuel Richardson Robert Genn Robert Henri
6.
Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.
Henri Matisse

7.
Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.
Henri Matisse

8.
The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse

Quote Topics by Henri Matisse: Art Color Artist Expression Feelings Drawing Painting Effort Mean Mind Inspirational Light Dream Reality Cutting Ideas Looks Tree Blue Creativity Running Beauty Character Eye Should World Balance Simple Choices Giving
9.
I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.
Henri Matisse

10.
Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.
Henri Matisse

11.
Nothing can be accomplished without love.
Henri Matisse

12.
Drawing is putting a line around an idea.
Henri Matisse

13.
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.
Henri Matisse

14.
The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.
Henri Matisse

15.
When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.
Henri Matisse

16.
It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.
Henri Matisse

17.
My pictures are made up of four or five colors that collide with one another.
Henri Matisse

18.
A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.
Henri Matisse

19.
I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.
Henri Matisse

20.
Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.
Henri Matisse

21.
A certain blue enters your soul
Henri Matisse

22.
To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.
Henri Matisse

23.
I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.
Henri Matisse

24.
Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.
Henri Matisse

25.
We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.
Henri Matisse

26.
Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.
Henri Matisse

27.
Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.
Henri Matisse

28.
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
Henri Matisse

29.
He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back.
Henri Matisse

30.
I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.
Henri Matisse

31.
It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse

32.
An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.
Henri Matisse

33.
Art is an escape from reality.
Henri Matisse

34.
Creation begins with vision.
Henri Matisse

35.
It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.
Henri Matisse

36.
If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.
Henri Matisse

37.
The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.
Henri Matisse

38.
Colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to preserve, just as in music you try to preserve sounds. It is a question of organization, of finding the arrangement that will keep the beauty and freshness of the colour
Henri Matisse

39.
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.
Henri Matisse

40.
Another word for creativity is courage.
Henri Matisse

41.
Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.
Henri Matisse

42.
Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.
Henri Matisse

43.
Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.
Henri Matisse

44.
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
Henri Matisse

45.
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
Henri Matisse

46.
When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.
Henri Matisse

47.
The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.
Henri Matisse

48.
A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.
Henri Matisse

49.
It is with color that you render light, though you must also feel this light, have it within yourself.
Henri Matisse

50.
I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
Henri Matisse