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Henri Matisse 1869 - 1954
Georges Braque 1882 - 1963
Henri Charles Manguin 1874 - 1945
Andre Derain 1880 - 1954
Maurice Vlaminck 1876 - 1958
Emile Othon Friesz 1879 - 1949
Raoul Dufy 1877 - 1953
Jean Puy 1876 - 1960
Kees van Dongen 1877 - 1968
Charles Camoin 1879 - 1965
Loius Valtat 1869 - 1952
Albert Marquet 1875 - 1947
The term Fauves means 'wild beasts' in French and was used by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles as a disparaging remark about the vivid and turbulent paintings that the group of artists listed above exhibited in the Salon d'Autumn of 1905. The group, centred around Matisse who was on the hanging committee, were given a room to themselves. In the same room were exhibited some portrait busts in the Renaissance Style by the sculptor Albert Marquet. On seeing the busts Vauxcelles exclaimed ' Donatello chez les Fauves' (Donatello amongst the wild beasts and by implication 'Daniel in the lion's den') from which time the name caught on and became generally applied.
Fauvism as a movement had a short life from 1905 to 1907. Its origins and concerns can be traced back to the work of the Post Impressionists. There is much diversity of temperament among the various artists associated with Fauvism but all of the work is characterised by an anti-academic attitude and was generally considered at the time to be anarchistic. Fauve painting generally retains ordinary perspective without deliberate distortion - the subjects can be easily recognised. However, the Fauve attitude to colour was revolutionary in that it was not used naturalistically as local colour with chiaroscuro to describe form but at its most intense saturation in an 'orchestration' of extreme contrasts. The impulse for this use of colour comes on the one hand from experience of the brilliant light of the south of France but also from the desire to use colour for its own sake as an expressive element within painting.
Some quotes:
"I used to go to work right out in the sunshine; the sky was blue, the wheat fields seemed to be stirring and trembling in the torrid heat, with hues of yellow covering the whole scale of chromes; they quivered as if they were about to go up in flames. Vermillion alone would render the brilliant red of the roofs on the hillside across the river. The orange of the soil, the raw, harsh colours of the walls and grass, the ultramarine and cobalt of the sky harmonised to extravagance at a sensual musical pitch. Only the colours on my canvas, orchestrated to the limit of their power and resonance could render the colour emotions of that landscape".
Maurice Vlaminck
"I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I must interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture....to paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colours suit this season, I will be inspired only by the sensation that the season gives me; the icy clearness of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the tonalities of the leaves. My sensation itself may vary, the autumn may be soft and warm like a protracted summer, or quite cool with a cold sky and lemon yellow trees that give a chilly impression and announce winter... I want to reach that condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture. What I am after most of all is expression.....the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete
“Expression for me, does not reside in the passions mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive: the place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's disposal to express his feelings....Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety...There is a necessary proportion of tones that may lead one to change the shape of a figure or transform a composition.
If upon a white canvas I jot down some sensations of blue, of green, of red - every new brush stroke diminishes the importance of the preceding ones. Suppose I set out to paint an interior: I have before me a cupboard; it gives me a sensation of bright red - I put down the red which satisfies me; immediately a relation is established between this red and the white of the canvas.
If I put a green near the red, if I paint in a yellow floor, there must still be between this green, this yellow and the white of the canvas a relation that will be satisfactory to me. But these several tones mutually weaken one another. It is necessary, therefore, that the various elements that I use be so balanced that they do not destroy one another. To do this I must organise my ideas; the relation between tones must be so established that they will sustain one another. A new combination of colours will succeed the first one and will give more completely my interpretation. I am forced to transpose until finally my picture may seem completely changed when, after successive modifications the red has succeeded the green as the dominant colour. I must interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. When I have found the relationship of all the tones the result must be a living harmony of tones, a harmony not unlike that of a musical composition.
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair to rest from physical fatigue.”
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