Fafa Fine Art Gallery

Henry Matisse
1869 Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 1954 Nice
Henry Matisse, founder of Fauvism,
is to be considered one of the most
important innovators of the 20th
century. He made choices which
became fundamental and a reference
point for many young painters
of the 20th century, Picasso included:
analytics, artificiality, primitivism
and pure colour are the three bases
of this innovation.
Fauvism is a French contribution
to Expressionism, but, compared
to the related German movement
which is connoted by dark atmospheres
and dramatic content, Fauvism
represents a “Mediterranean”
and sunny variant to Expressionism;
it represented the first real break
with Impressionism and the first
modern experience which released
the relationship between the true
colour of things and the one used
to represent them in painting.
Obsessed by wild nature, “the
beasts” searched for immediate
expression with the use of pure
colours and the artist’s emotion
in front of nature. In this linocut,
whose two-dimensionality is sharp,
the lightness of brush marks and
the purity of tones blend with exotic
artistic shapes where colour
becomes a representative subject of
a world in which one can find shelter,
a world in which inner conflicts
are absent, and alienation does
not find shelter. Matisse’s artistic
journey arrived to understand the
most various expressive techniques.
In sixty years of work it constantly
renewed itself: stained glass, etchings,
prints, costumes and theatre
scenery paintings, book illustrations
and statues which follow a balanced
flow, serene and devoid of fractures
between past and modernity.