Henri Matisse

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.

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

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

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

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

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.

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.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

The living model, the naked body of a woman, is the privileged seat of feeling, but also of questioning... The model must mark you, awaken in you an emotion which you seek in turn to express.

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.

A painting in an interior spreads joy around it by the colors, which calm us.

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

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

What I am after, above all, is expression.

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.

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

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

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.

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.