Fauvism
Started: 1899
Ended: 1908
KEY ARTISTS
 | Henri Matisse Quick View  Artist Page |
| Henri Matisse |  |
| Henri Matisse was a French painter and sculptor who helped forge modern art. From his early Fauvist works to his late cutouts, he emphasized expansive fields of color, the expressive potential of gesture, and the sensuality inherent in art-making. Art Story: Henri Matisse Artist Page | ||
 | Maurice de Vlaminck Quick View Artist Page |
| Maurice de Vlaminck | |
| Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter was a prominent member of the Fauvist movement, along with Matisse and Derain. De Vlaminck's best known work is characterized by a bold usage of reds, oranges and yellows, with a preference for rolling landscapes and woodland scenes. Art Story: Maurice de Vlaminck Artist Page | ||
 | André Derain Quick View Artist Page |
| André Derain | |
| André Derain, the co-founder of Fauvism, was a French artist whose paintings exhibit the writhing energetic lines and bright colors characteristic of the movement. He strove to keep art modern and current throughout his career. Art Story: André Derain Artist Page | ||
 | Kees van Dongen Quick View Artist Page |
| Kees van Dongen | |
| The Dutch-French artist's works created a remarkable record of fashions and social attitudes in Paris over the first half of the twentieth century and added to the output and scope of the Fauvism movement. Art Story: Kees van Dongen Artist Page | ||
 | Raoul Dufy Quick View Artist Page |
| Raoul Dufy | |
| Raoul Dufy was a French painter primarily associated with the short-lived, but important, Fauvist movement. Dufy's colorful outdoor scenes depicting gardens, social events and busy seascapes are his most famous, yet he also created popular fabric designs. Art Story: Raoul Dufy Artist Page | ||
 | Georges Braque Quick View Artist Page |
| Georges Braque | |
| Georges Braque was a modern French painter who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed analytic Cubism and Cubist collage in the early twentieth century. Art Story: Georges Braque Artist Page | ||
"If the trees look yellow to the artist, then painted a bright yellow they must be."
Summary of Fauvism
Fauvism, the first 20th-century movement in modern art, was initially inspired by the examples of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne. The Fauves ("wild beasts") were a loosely allied group of French painters with shared interests. Several of them, including Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault, had been pupils of the Symbolist artist Gustave Moreau and admired the older artist's emphasis on personal expression. Matisse emerged as the leader of the group, whose members shared the use of intense color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure color and form as means of communicating the artist's emotional state. In these regards, Fauvism proved to be an important precursor to Cubism and Expressionism as well as a touchstone for future modes of abstraction.
Key Ideas
Born to a family of weavers, and growing up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, as a child Henri Mattise was influenced by the bright colors and patterns of local textiles. His primal feeling for color (the very basis of Fauvism) was reawakened when, as a young man he returned home to convalesce from appendicitis, and his mother gave him a paint box. He later said, "From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges toward the thing it loves."
Important Art and Artists of Fauvism | |
  | Luxe, Calme et Volupte (1904)Artist: Henri Matisse Artwork description & Analysis: This early work by Matisse clearly indicates the artist's stylistic influences, most notably Georges Seurat's Pointillism and Paul Signac's Divisionism, in the use of tiny dabs of color to create a visual frisson. What sets this work apart from these more rigid methods, however, is Matisse's intense concentrations of pure color. The oranges, yellows, greens, and other colors all maintain their own discrete places on the picture plane, never quite merging to form the harmonious tonality that both Seurat and Signac were known for, and instead heighten the almost vertiginous effect created by the striking dots of paint. Matisse took this work's title, which translates as "luxury, peace, and pleasure," from Charles Baudelaire's poem L'Invitation au Voyage (Invitation to a Voyage). Oil on canvas - Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris |
 | The River Seine at Chatou (1906)Artist: Maurice de Vlaminck Artwork description & Analysis: This scene depicts the portion of the Seine that runs through Chatou, the Paris suburb where de Vlaminck and Derain shared a studio beginning in 1901. For The River Seine, de Vlaminck used impasto (a technique practiced by many Fauves): thick daubs of paint applied directly from the tube, then brushed together in short strokes to create the effect of movement. For the water and sky, de Vlaminck used a range of blues and greens, as well as dazzling white highlights applied in choppy dabs; the two red-and-orange trees at the left provide a lively contrast. The finished effect is one of brightness and vibrating motion; detail and traditional perspective matter far less than a sense of buoyant pleasure. As de Vlaminck said, "I try to paint with my heart and my guts without worrying about style." Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 | Pinède à Cassis (Landscape) (1907)Artist: André Derain Artwork description & Analysis: Derain famously claimed to use "color as a means of expressing my emotion and not as a transcription of nature." In this painting (just as in his famous Mountains at Collioure (1905)) Derain used long, isolated brushstrokes, influenced by Divisionist painting, to structure the trees and ground of his landscape. The colors are indeed non-representational, even unnatural: the trees' trunks are almost green, and the landscape is abstracted in patches of bright yellow and orange. The pulsing brushwork and jarring contrasts of these colors suggest the shimmering heat of a Mediterranean summer. By rejecting chiaroscuro and spatial depth, Derain keeps the viewer's attention fixed on this effect of light and on the life force that seems to ripple through every element of the landscape. Oil on canvas - Musée Cantini, Marseille |
More Fauvism Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
First published on 25 Jan 2015. Updated and modified regularly. 
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