Explore Quotes by Henri Matisse

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

Exactitude is not truth.

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.

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

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

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

Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

My curves are not crazy.

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

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.

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

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.

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

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