Henri Matisse quotes:

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like Signac is preoccupied with complementary colors, and the theoretical knowledge of them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation.

Creativity takes courage.

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.

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

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

A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing.

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

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.

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.

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

Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.

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

Exactitude is not truth.

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

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

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.

I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.

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

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

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...

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.

Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they wanted to safeguard their freedom.

Truly, I'm not joking when I thank my lucky stars for the awful operation I had, since it has made me young again and philosophical which means that I don't want to fritter away the new lease on life I've been given.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

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

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

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

From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

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.

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

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

The energy within you is stronger than ever for being held back, compressed, and said No to ...

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.

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.

In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.

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.

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.

Work cures everything.

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

...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.

...I am driven on by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

A certain blue enters your soul

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

A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.

A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.

A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.

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...

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.

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

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

All art worthy of the name is religious.

All my efforts go into creating an art that can be understood by everyone.

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.

An artist is an explorer.

An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

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.

Another word for creativity is courage.

Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.

Art is an escape from reality.

Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.

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

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

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

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

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.

Creation begins with vision.

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

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

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

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

Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.

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

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

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.

Everything that we see in our daily lives is more or less distorted by acquired habits and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters and magazines present us every day with a flood of ready-made images which are to the eye what prejudices are to the mind. The effort to see things without distortion demands a kind of courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time.

Exactitude is not truth. [Fr., L'exactitude n'est pas la verite.]

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.

Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole...

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

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...

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.

Hatred is a parasite that devours all. One doesn't build upon hatred, but upon love.

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.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

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.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.

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

I don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person in a certain way.

I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

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

I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.

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.