Fauvism
Les fauves..
Fauvism had its start in the summer of 1905. A french artist was experimenting with the ideas of post impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, submitting his work to Salon d’Automne in Paris (The Salon) 1. A critic, Louis Vauxcelles called this and pieces like this style “fauves” which means wild beasts in french. The artist that submitted that fateful piece, The Woman With a Hat 1950, was Henri Matisse, the leader of this powerful movement.
The Woman With a Hat, 1905 image from Google images
Matisse and Art
Fauvism, like stated before, derives from the ideas of the post impressionism and Neo-Impressionism movements. Part of the movement’s main inspiration from artists like Van Gough, Gauguin, Cézanne from Post Impression and Seurat, Cross and Signac from the Neo-impressionism movement 2. With them, the result of the Fauves art style is thick and often direction from the tube approach of painting, bold colors, and a rejection of a three dimensional plane. The color and brush strokes of work would be the new plane of dimensional work, resulting in wild and bold movements and rendering of the subject matter that included seeing the raw canvas in the piece itself (which shocked viewers at the time!).
​
Click here to see the original print of Matisse on Art by Jack Flam!
Matisse on Art by Jack Flam (1995 revise, Original: 1978)
Joys of Life, 1905-6 from Google images
Joys of Life, 1905-6
Henri Matisse’s work, Joys of Life 1905-6, is one of his earliest works but it still has a profound effect on artists still today. The piece demonstrates flowing colors and figures that make the piece almost ethereal. His goal for every painting such as this one is to find the “essential character of things” and to produce art that is balanced, pure and full of serenity 3. Purity of the canvas and paint was an important and sacred element for fauves and to showcase this element with their art was meant to ground the viewer into reality, to not just to see the subject, but to see the painting for itself.
Conclusion
Fauvism would go on to help inspire many other future movements and artists alike, but to have a movement to focus on the idea of the elements of painting like color, the paint, and the canvas was something that none dared to experiment with. Fauvism is the result of experimentation of art and the future desires for artists, with many still discovering what is it to truly paint a scene or subject on the canvas today.
Matisse in his studio image from RedHouse Originals
-
Rewald, Sabine. Fauvism. The Met, October 2004. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm.
-
Rewald, “Fauvism”.
-
Dabrowski, Magdalena. Henri Matisse (1869–1954). The Met, October 2004. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mati/hd_mati.htm.