Henri Matisse Quotations

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

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

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

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

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

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.

In love, the one who runs away is the winner.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

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.

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

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

I did my sculpture as a painter. I did not work as a sculptor.

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.

The artist must summon all his energy, his sincerity, and the greatest modesty in order to shatter the old cliches that come so easily to hand while working, which can suffocate the little flower that does not come, ever, the way one expects.

The only valid thing in art is the one thing that cannot be explained, to explain away the mystery of a great painting would do irreplaceable harm, for whenever you explain or define something you substitute the explanation or the definition for the

There are wonderful things in real jazz, the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Those who work in a preconceived style, deliberately turning their backs on nature, miss the truth. An artist must recognize, when he is reasoning, that his picture is an artifice; but when he is painting, he should feel that he has copied nature. An

When I saw what a mess everything was in I asked for my money back on the ticket. I would have felt I was deserting. If everyone of any value leaves France, what will remain of France?

I've been reading about the panic attacks Matisse had when he was painting.

The paper cutouts allow me to draw with color. For me, it is a simplification. Instead of drawing an outline and then filling in with color-with one modifying the other-I draw directly in color...It is not a starting point, it is a completion.

A distinction is made between painters who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Personally, I think neither of these methods must be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Both may be used in turn by the same indivi

All that I really have to recount are observations and notes made during the course of my life as a painter. I ask those who will have the patience to read these notes the indulgence usually granted to the writings of painters

These images in vivid and violent tones have resulted from crystallization of memories of the circus, popular tales or travel.

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

Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.

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

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

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.

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

Creativity takes courage.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Exactitude is not truth.

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.

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

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.

Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.

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

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

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

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

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.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

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

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

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

From Bonheur de Vivre - I was thirty-five then - to this cut-out - I am eighty-two - I have not changed; not in the way my friends mean who want to compliment me, no matter what, on my good health, but because all this time I have looked for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means...

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.

Colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to preserve, just as in music you try to preserve sounds. It is a question of organization, of finding the arrangement that will keep the beauty and freshness of the colour

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

Nothing can be accomplished without love.

Another word for creativity is courage.

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.

Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.

The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.

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.

An artist is an explorer.

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

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

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.

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...

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

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

Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?

What I am after, above all, is expression.

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.

Creation begins with vision.

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

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...

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

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Work cures everything.