Henri Matisse Color Quotations

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

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

I'd like to introduce my color prints under the most favorable of conditions. For this reason I must separate them by intervals of a different character. I decided that handwriting was best suited for this purpose. The exceptional size of the writing

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

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

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

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.

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.

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

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.

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

A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres.

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

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.

It is with color that you render light, though you must also feel this light, have it within yourself.

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

The main function of color should be to serve expression.

The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.

Drawing is of the spirit; color is of the senses.

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

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.

Modern art spreads joy around by its color, which calms us.

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.

The splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting up of form and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of the retina, but one which destroys all tranquility of surface and contour. Objects are differentiated only by the luminosity that is given them.

I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation

Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.