256 Quotes by Henri Matisse

One must, of course, have one's entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

Precision is not reality

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

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.

When you're out of willpower you call on stubbornness, that's the trick.

If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.

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

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.