When did Matisse start using fauvism in his works?

Question

When did he start experimenting colours and lines to create the movement, Fauvism? The year would be good enough.

Answer 1

In 1901 Matisse met Vlaminck and Derain and discovered the power of colour. By 1905 he was producing some of the most powerful and innovating works that later became known as 'fauvism'. It was a French term which means 'wild beast' first coined by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire who was actually a friend of the new artists at the time.

Answer 2

Fauvism was a short-lived movement, lasting only as long as its originator, Henri Matisse (1869-1954), fought to find the artistic freedom he needed. Matisse had to make color serve his art, rather as Gauguin needed to paint the sand pink to express an emotion. The Fauvists believed absolutely in color as an emotional force. With Matisse and his friends, Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958) and André Derain (1880-1954), color lost its descriptive qualities and became luminous, creating light rather than imitating it. They astonished viewers at the 1905 Salon d'Automne: the art critic Louis Vauxcelles saw their bold paintings surrounding a conventional sculpture of a young boy, and remarked that it was like a Donatello ``parmi les fauves'' (among the wild beasts). The painterly freedom of the Fauves and their expressive use of color gave splendid proof of their intelligent study of van Gogh's art. But their art seemed brasher than anything seen before.

During its brief flourishing, Fauvism had some notable adherents, including Rouault, Dufy, and Braque. Vlaminck had a touch of his internal moods: even if The River (c. 1910; 60 x 73 cm (23 1/2 x 28 3/4 in)) looks at peace, we feel a storm is coming. A self-professed ``primitive'', he ignored the wealth of art in the Louvre, preferring to collect the African masks that became so important to early 20th-century art.

Derain also showed a primitive wildness in his Fauve period-- Charing Cross Bridge (1906; 80 x 100 cm (32 x 39 in)) bestrides a strangely tropical London-- though as he aged he quenched his fire to a classic calm. He shared a studio with Vlaminck for a while and The River and Charing Cross Bridge seem to share a vibrant power: both reveal an unselfconscious use of color and shape, a delight in the sheer patterning of things. This may not be profound art but it does give visual pleasure.

2005 celebrated 100 years since the birth of Fauvism.

Matisse and colleagues, including André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Albert Marquet, persevere, and their paintings are hung in Room 7. The public jeers at the "orgy of pure colors," judging the works primitive, brutal, and violent. The artists are dubbed "fauves"—wild beasts. Room 7 becomes "le cage."
André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.3


2. André Derain, Mountains at Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.4

3. André Derain, View of the Thames, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1985.64.12


4. Albert Marquet, Posters at Trouville, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.1


5. Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.4


6. Georges Braque, The Port of La Ciotat, 1907, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74

The term fauve, actually coined by a generally sympathetic critic, has stuck. It describes a style that, while short-lived, was the first avant-garde wave of the twentieth century. The jeering audiences in Room 7 got an early look at what the century would bring.

Most of these fauve paintings were done in the years immediately after the 1905 exhibition.

The saturated colors of fauve paintings—all created between about 1904 and 1908—were not descriptive of nature. The paintings' bold strokes had an autonomous existence that often had little to do with mimicking surface appearances. The colors were unblended, without the subtle shading that suggests three-dimensionality. Their very brilliance and the strong rhythms of the brushstrokes worked against any perception of depth.
Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.7




These were paintings on the edge of abstraction. They negotiated new, unstable territory—were they essentially flat, patterned surfaces or a "window" onto the world? Fauve pictures stand at the border between pictorial illusion and the kind of "pure paint" that would become a preoccupation of twentieth-century modernism. As Matisse later observed, "Fauve painting is not everything, but it is the foundation of everything."
André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.3


2. André Derain, Mountains at Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.4

3. André Derain, View of the Thames, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1985.64.12


4. Albert Marquet, Posters at Trouville, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.1


5. Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.4


6. Georges Braque, The Port of La Ciotat, 1907, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.6