Henri Matisse famous quotes

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

#Giving #Feelings #May

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

#Prayer #Mind #Essentials

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
-- Henri Matisse

#Positive #Beautiful #Art

Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.
-- Henri Matisse

#Inspirational #Happiness #Work

Creativity takes courage.
-- Henri Matisse

#Inspirational #Life #Beautiful

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

#Color #Four #Made

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

#Views #Sky #Tree

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

#Art #Should #Armchairs

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

#Brother #Believe #Men

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

#Love #Running #Freedom

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Emotional #Feelings

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

#Art #Artist #Differences

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

#Courage #Optimistic #Looks

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

#Ideas #Drawing #Lines

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Mind #Goldfish

Nothing can be accomplished without love.
-- Henri Matisse

#Accomplished

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

#Funny #Art #Drawing

It has always bothered me that I don't paint like everyone else
-- Henri Matisse

#Paint #Bothered

Work cures everything.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Cures

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

#Beautiful #Art #Color

Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Cutting #Color

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.
-- Henri Matisse

#Color #Energy #Witchcraft

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.
-- Henri Matisse

#Feelings #Way #My Way

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.
-- Henri Matisse

#Feelings #Want #Opinion

Above all, an artist must never be too easily satisfied with what he has done...
-- Henri Matisse

#Artist #Done #Satisfaction

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Inspiration #Waiting

Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Reality #Resistance

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

#Blue #Blood #Color

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

#Beauty #Artist #Drawing

Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.
-- Henri Matisse

#Artist #Light #Color

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.
-- Henri Matisse

#Color

I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.
-- Henri Matisse

#Fetch #Saws #Embarrassed

If it is practiced by a man of taste, the photograph will have the appearance of art (but) the photographer must...intervene as little as possible, so as not to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses.
-- Henri Matisse

#Photography #Art #Men

Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Rooms #Mystery

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

#Dream #Spiritual #Art

Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.
-- Henri Matisse

#Effort #Creative

What I am after, above all, is expression.
-- Henri Matisse

#Expression

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Want #Condensation

When you're out of willpower you call on stubbornness, that's the trick.
-- Henri Matisse

#Funny Inspirational #Willpower #Stubbornness

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Struggle #Wages

The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Special #Quality

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.
-- Henri Matisse

#Spring #Artist #Lightning

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 towards the thing it loves.
-- Henri Matisse

#Hands #Color #Moments

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue
-- Henri Matisse

#Cutting #Wish #Tongue

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.
-- Henri Matisse

#Feelings #Way #Painting

Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Color #Importance

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

#Color #Red

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

#Expression #Ideas #Emotion

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.
-- Henri Matisse

#Inspirational #Music #Jazz

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

#Art #Flower #Rose

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Vision #World

In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.
-- Henri Matisse

#Able #Influence #Walks

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.
-- Henri Matisse

#Past #Delight #Growing

Another word for creativity is courage.
-- Henri Matisse

#Courage #Creativity #Design

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

#Art #Love Is #Alaska

I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.
-- Henri Matisse

#Buddhist #Art #Prayer

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
-- Henri Matisse

#Artist #Effort #Mastery

In love, the one who runs away is the winner.
-- Henri Matisse

#Love #Running #Running Away

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

#Mean #Artist #Expression

After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.
-- Henri Matisse

#Wall #Struggle #Hard Work

What I dream of is an art of balance.
-- Henri Matisse

#Dream #Art #Balance

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Landscape #Figures

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

#Color #Feelings #Looks

Creation begins with vision.
-- Henri Matisse

#Vision #Creation

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

#Art #Real #Light

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.
-- Henri Matisse

#Past #Digging #Generations

An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Style #Etc

There are flowers everywhere, for those who bother to look.
-- Henri Matisse

#Flower #Positive Thinking #Looks

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

#Dream #Depressing #Art

Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.
-- Henri Matisse

#Doe #Lines #One Line

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Paint #Art Education

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

#Art #Soul #Newspapers

The energy within you is stronger than ever for being held back, compressed, and said No to ...
-- Henri Matisse

#Stronger #Energy #Said

There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence.
-- Henri Matisse

#Essence #Painting #Form

I dream of an art of balance, of quietness, something analogous to a good armchair.
-- Henri Matisse

#Dream #Art #Balance

The truly original artist invents his own signs.
-- Henri Matisse

#Artist

Color was not given to us in order that we imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.
-- Henri Matisse

#Order #Color #Emotion

I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.
-- Henri Matisse

#Country #Expression #Color

Simple colours can affect the intimate feelings with all the more force because they are simple.
-- Henri Matisse

#Simple #Color #Rainbow

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

#Art #Taken #Expression

I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been no more than a medium as it were.
-- Henri Matisse

#Today #Normal #Aliens

Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.
-- Henri Matisse

#Quiet #Paint #Starting

A certain blue enters your soul
-- Henri Matisse

#Blue #Soul #Certain

Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Artist #Prison

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.
-- Henri Matisse

#Artistic #Should #Impress

All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.
-- Henri Matisse

#Art #Mind #Elements

The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it.
-- Henri Matisse

#Peculiar #Harmony #Invention

Truly, I'm not joking when I thank my lucky stars for the awful operation I had, since it has made me young again and philosophical which means that I don't want to fritter away the new lease on life I've been given.
-- Henri Matisse

#Stars #Philosophical #Mean

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.
-- Henri Matisse

#Expression #Gains #Clarity

Love wants to rise, not to be held down by anything base... He who loves flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back. Derive happiness from yourself, from a good day's work, from the clearing that it makes in the fog that surrounds us.
-- Henri Matisse

#Running #Good Day #Fog

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

#Cezanne #Painting #Masters

I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation
-- Henri Matisse

#Color #Trying

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man...
-- Henri Matisse

#Men #Artist #Imagination

The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it.
-- Henri Matisse

#Garden #Doors #Order

Exactitude is not truth. [Fr., L'exactitude n'est pas la verite.]
-- Henri Matisse

#Truth #Exactitude

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

#Children #Artist #Firsts

I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.
-- Henri Matisse

#Color #Musical #Way

I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.
-- Henri Matisse

#Drawing #Tree #Copying

The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort.
-- Henri Matisse

#Artist #Effort #Creative

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

#Artist #Hatred #Soul