Fauvism

Fauvism is a style of painting that flourished in France around the turn of the 20th century i.e., 1905 t0 1910, led by the painters Henri Matisse and André Derain, which is characterized by strong colors and fierce brushwork.

It is one of the most spontaneous and expressive painting style with use of vibrant colours.

How to identify Fauvism painting –

· It is characterized by small but bold brushstrokes of unblended colors directly on the canvas, it is up to the spectator’s eye to connect the dots and create the mixture of tones

· Instead of painting the world how it really is, the Fauves painted the world as they experienced it and used color more so as a form of their own personal expression

· This often came in the form of vivid colors, awkward perspective and distorted forms. They rarely painted true colors. For example, in Matisse’s painting les toits de collioure, 1905 , notice the pink and red hues used to depict the mountains and the ground.

The name of the movement, Fauves, or “wild animals”, was given by art critic,Louis Vauxcelles.

The leader of the group was Henry Matisse, who exhibited his famous painting, Woman with the hat , at an exhibition in 1905.

Matisses’s Green Stripe is one of the most famous Fauvism painting. Solid colours, rough brush strokes and thick black lines were used to paint the portrait of his wife.

Painting – Green Strips by Henry Matisse . The depiction of the artist’s wife, Amélie, is one of Matisse’s most famous paintings and a masterpiece within 20th century portraiture . Matisse has used color alone to describe the image with a slash of green, purpled against a frame of three jostling colors. The green stripe down the center of face acts as an artificial shadow line

and divides the face, with a light and a dark side, with a cool and warm side. the highly visible brush strokes add to the sense of artistic drama.