Henri Matisse
In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.Collection: Art
A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.Collection: Unique
The Barnes Foundation is the only sane place to see art in America.Collection: Art
If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone.Collection: Stories
It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.Collection: Religious
What matters most to me? To work with my model until I have it enough in me to be able to improvise, to let my hand run free.Collection: Running
From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.Collection: Portraits
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.Collection: Peculiar
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.Collection: Artist
Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole.Collection: House
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.Collection: Stars
Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share.Collection: Passion
Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive.Collection: Passion
Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.Collection: Art
The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.Collection: Color
There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.Collection: Music
Hatred is a parasite that devours all. One doesn't build upon hatred, but upon love.Collection: Hatred
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.Collection: Color
When I started to paint I felt transported into a kind of paradise... In everyday life I was usually bored and vexed... Starting to paint I felt gloriously free.Collection: Freedom
...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.Collection: Feelings
The truly original artist invents his own signs.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Giving
Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Spring
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.Collection: Color
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.Collection: Art
You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.Collection: Cutting
What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.Collection: Art
All art worthy of the name is religious.Collection: Religious
Drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses.Collection: Color
Truth and reality in art begin at the point where the artist ceases to understand what he is doing and capable of doing - yet feels in himself a force that becomes steadily stronger... and more concentrated.Collection: Art
All my efforts go into creating an art that can be understood by everyone.Collection: Art
My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like Signac is preoccupied with complementary colors, and the theoretical knowledge of them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation.Collection: Artist
Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.Collection: Cezanne
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.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Expression
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.Collection: Art
The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.Collection: Play
I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.Collection: Independent
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.Collection: Art
One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.Collection: Instinct
An artist must not feel under any constraint.Collection: Freedom
To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought.Collection: Ideas
There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair.Collection: Emotional
When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.Collection: Children
When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.Collection: Art
The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.Collection: Expression
One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work.Collection: Work