Top 100 Matisse's Quotes

#1. My mother was a Bloomsbury figure: a great friend of TS Eliot, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell. My grandmother, Mary Hutchinson, gave her life to works of art, being an admirer of Matisse and Giaometti, whom I collected as a young man because of her.

Jacob Rothschild

Matisse's Quotes #1540
#2. The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #11769
#3. Seek the strongest color effect possible ... the content is of no importance.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #20467
#4. 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.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #20784
#5. 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

Matisse's Quotes #36742
#6. 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

Matisse's Quotes #38765
#7. Matisse renovates rather than innovates.

Guillaume Apollinaire

Matisse's Quotes #38923
#8. I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque India belongs only to me.

Amrita Sher-Gil

Matisse's Quotes #49077
#9. Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #50958
#10. Modern art spreads joy around by its color, which calms us.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #58463
#11. 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

Matisse's Quotes #61586
#12. 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

Matisse's Quotes #66480
#13. 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

Matisse's Quotes #71622
#14. An artist who wants to transpose a composition onto a larger canvas must conceive it over again in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just fill in the squares into which he has divided his canvas.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #76485
#15. From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #77750
#16. I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #83664
#17. In love, the one who runs away is the winner.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #85652
#18. Put a colour upon a canvas - it not only colours with that colour the part of the canvas to which the colour has been applied, but it also colours the surrounding space with the complementary.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #88042
#19. I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #88411
#20. 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

Matisse's Quotes #92778
#21. 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.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #101367
#22. Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #103669
#23. I've photographed everybody from Matisse to Isamu Noguchi.

Carl Van Vechten

Matisse's Quotes #113958
#24. Don't feel you have to buy something to sit in or at. Buy something you are emotionally attached to and build your design around that. One Matisse cutout poster could provide you with your whole color scheme!

Alexandra Stoddard

Matisse's Quotes #120526
#25. Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #122081
#26. People say I am stuck in childhood, but it's not that. I remember seeing a Matisse retrospective, and you could see he started out one way, and then he tried something different, and then he seemed to spend his whole life trying to get back to the first thing.

Tim Burton

Matisse's Quotes #128806
#27. 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

Matisse's Quotes #144266
#28. I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #151170
#29. Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #158582
#30. Precision is not reality

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #159068
#31. Creativity takes courage.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #173347
#32. Art is an escape from reality.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #176838
#33. Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #180413
#34. My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model ...

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #183196
#35. 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.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #185526
#36. The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #207508
#37. You cannot deny your origins: I love Kirchner more than Matisse, although Matisse was a greater artist. That isn't to do with nationality. It's a stronger feeling.

Georg Baselitz

Matisse's Quotes #210247
#38. 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

Matisse's Quotes #214938
#39. Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #230569
#40. There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #236488
#41. What I am after, above all, is expression.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #244868
#42. Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #247608
#43. Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about ... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there ... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution ...

David Hockney

Matisse's Quotes #251255
#44. Another word for creativity is courage.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #254784
#45. I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #264901
#46. A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #289080
#47. Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten.

Howard Hodgkin

Matisse's Quotes #314960
#48. 'Matisse and Picasso' is a little like Plato after Socrates. Socrates only taught in words. He didn't write. And after that, you had Plato and Aristotle to write about what he had said. I write about them because they didn't write about them.

Francoise Gilot

Matisse's Quotes #324883
#49. In the end there is only Matisse.

Pablo Picasso

Matisse's Quotes #326598
#50. I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a
painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex. - 1946

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #331205
#51. The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #352932
#52. Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #353788
#53. Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #357451
#54. I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #372540
#55. To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #381304
#56. Art comes from art: I remember going to the Matisse show and seeing how Matisse had taken one of his own paintings, worked from it and transformed it, and that had led on to the next one and the next.

Anthony Caro

Matisse's Quotes #385468
#57. The main function of color should be to serve expression.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #412733
#58. All things considered, there is only Matisse.

Pablo Picasso

Matisse's Quotes #414014
#59. In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.

Wassily Kandinsky

Matisse's Quotes #419416
#60. 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.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #428036
#61. 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

Matisse's Quotes #431110
#62. A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #433517
#63. Hatred is a parasite that devours all. One doesn't build upon hatred, but upon love.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #437481
#64. A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter ...

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #440928
#65. A certain blue enters your soul

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #452329
#66. Creation begins with vision.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #467340
#67. 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

Matisse's Quotes #470609
#68. 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

Matisse's Quotes #476153
#69. 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 ...

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #484426
#70. Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #498086
#71. Matisse was my God. I'm a French artist, that's for sure. I am color-oriented and what you might call a composer. I am not pouring my guts out; I keep them inside.

Francoise Gilot

Matisse's Quotes #499254
#72. For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #499928
#73. Matisse draws what I call the essence of the plants. He leaves a shape open. He'll do a leaf and not close it. Everybody used to say, oh, I got it all from Matisse, and I said, 'Not really.'

Ellsworth Kelly

Matisse's Quotes #519144
#74. Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #519553
#75. I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #541544
#76. All my efforts go into creating an art that can be understood by everyone.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #547357
#77. If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #557039
#78. Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #560748
#79. Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #573529
#80. Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #575590
#81. I think Picasso is more feminine than Matisse.

Gary Hume

Matisse's Quotes #590934
#82. The energy within you is stronger than ever for being held back, compressed, and said No to ...

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #621358
#83. 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

Matisse's Quotes #641703
#84. Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #643746
#85. The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #724483
#86. Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #776523
#87. I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

A.S. Byatt

Matisse's Quotes #793943
#88. Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1061821
#89. One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1102268
#90. 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.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1122326
#91. Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1300169
#92. 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.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1319176
#93. Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor's direct carving.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1402015
#94. I said, I don't want to paint things like Picasso's women and Matisse's odalisques lying on couches with pillows. I don't want to paint people. I want to paint something I have never seen before. I don't want to make what I'm looking at. I want the fragments.

Ellsworth Kelly

Matisse's Quotes #1448824
#95. There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1679204
#96. Simplicity can have a negative impact when it's the crude reduction of nuances beyond appreciation: a Matisse presented as a 16-color GIF.

Matt Mullenweg

Matisse's Quotes #1711620
#97. The problem with Matisse is that I can't ever figure out when he's done a good painting or a bad painting because I don't know how to analyse him. I just know that I like the way he put it on and I like his airs and forms.

Susan Rothenberg

Matisse's Quotes #1739670
#98. Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illumination the fog that surround

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1817523
#99. Near the end of his life, Henri Matisse's preferred attire was evening wear,
by which I mean pajamas.

Holland Cotter

Matisse's Quotes #1826482
#100. When you're out of willpower you call on stubbornness, that's the trick.

Henri Matisse

Matisse's Quotes #1837623

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