Fauvism Archives – Daily Art Fixx

Painter, sculptor, printmaker, designer, draughtsman, and writer, Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was born on December 31, 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France. Before studying art, Matisse worked as a solicitor’s clerk in Saint-Quentin and took a law degree from 1887 to 1889 in Paris.

Matisse studied drawing at Ecole Quentin Latour and began painting in the winter of 1889 while recovering from appendicitis. He gave up law to study painting at the Académie Julian in 1891 under painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and took drawing and perspective courses at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Matisse joined the studio of Gustave Moreau in 1892 and passed the entrance examination of Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1895. In 1898, he married Amélie Parayre with whom he had two sons.

Matisse’s early works were essentially based on the study of the Old Masters “firmly based on reality, in a restricted tonal palette influenced above all by his copies after Dutch masters and Chardin and by exhibitions he had seen of the work of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot and Edouard Manet.”

Matisse exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1901 and had his first solo show at the Galerie Vollard in 1904.

Matisse, along with André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck became one of the principal figures of Fauvism, which has its base in Impressionism. “In reviving the study of the nude human figure, Matisse’s work was partially a reaction against what he perceived as Impressionism’s neglect of this traditional subject.”

Like other avant-garde artists in Paris at the time, Matisse was interested in influences beyond the realist tradition. In 1904 and 1905, he spent summers painting in the Mediterranean which resulted in his abandonment of the traditional Impressionist palette in favour of what would become his characteristic style of “flat, brilliant colour and fluid line”.

From 1906 to 1910, Matisse became increasingly successful and his art began to be exhibited and published outside of France. Writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, as well as art collectors Etta and Claribel Cone, began acquiring Matisse’s work. During this time, he was also introduced to Picasso with whom he would have an “intermittent rivalry”.

“Matisse’s work during this period falls into three categories: figure compositions, still-lifes and interiors, and portraits. He moved away from the Fauve style and experimented with a new language of the human figure stimulated primarily by Gauguin’s primitivism, but also by Cézanne’s compositions of bathers, by classical decorations, by African tribal sculpture and by the challenge of Picasso.” (MoMA)

Between 1010 and 1917, Matisse created what many critics say are the best works of his career. Inspired by his travels to Spain, Russia, Morocco, his further response to Cubism was to create larger, more exotic and colourful paintings.

In 1918, Matisse relocated to Nice, France where creatively he focused on the female form, landscapes, interiors, still-lifes of flowers, and light itself. During this period, he maintained a habit of working outdoors but this production did not result in major works. In 1925, Matisse traveled to Italy and Sicily after which he painted fewer canvases and seemingly gave himself the “task of resolving in drawings, sculptures, prints and paintings the articulation and balance of mass of the seated and reclining female nude.”

Matisse virtually gave up painting in 1929 to focus on a series of over 200 etchings, drypoints and lithographs. “Drawing was essential to Matisse’s paintings of the later 1930s, as was an expressive distortion of the female form in order to capture the mood or personality of the model, for example by exaggerating the length of her body in languid repose.”

In 1928, Matisse moved to Cimiez, a suburb above Nice. In 1941, surgery for a tumor left him disabled and unable to travel. This led to his grand interior paintings between 1946 and 1948, the decoration of the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence from 1948 to 1951, and to his final works – a series of paper cut-outs.

Matisse died of a heart attack on November 3, 1954 at the age of eighty-four. He is buried at the cemetery of the Monastère Notre Dame de Cimiez, near Nice.

For an in depth biography, visit the MoMA website.

Sources: MoMA, Guggenheim, Wikipedia (images)

Born on April 20, 1893 in Barcelona, Joan Miró Ferra was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and decorative artist and a key figure in the history of abstract art.

Miró studied business at the Escuela de Comercio and art at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de la Lonja in Barcelona from 1907 to 1910. In 1911, an attack of typhus, as well as nervous depression, enabled him give up his business course and resume his art studies. From 1912-15 he attended Francesc Galí’s Escola d’Art in Barcelona.

Between 1915 and 1918 Miró painted in a style that he described as Fauve, using strong, bright colours. During this period he painted portraits as well as landscapes and views of villages in the province of Tarragona. In 1918 Miró had his first solo exhibition in the Barcelona gallery run by Lluís Dalmau, a key figure in the Catalan avant-garde.

From 1918 to 1922 Miró’s paintings became meticulous and precise with a stylization and flatness akin to the Romanesque paintings that had impressed him in the Museu d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. In 1920, he traveled to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso. From this time on, he divided his time between Paris and Montroig, Spain. In Paris, he associated with the poets Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and Tristan Tzara and participated in Dada activities. Miró had his first solo show in Paris at the Galerie la Licorne in 1921 and his work was included in the Salon d’Automne of 1923.

In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group. In 1925, his solo show at the Galerie Pierre in Paris was a major Surrealist event. That same year, Miró was included in the first Surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre. In 1928, he visited the Netherlands and began a series of paintings inspired by Dutch masters. It was during this that that he also produced his first papiers collés and collages.

In 1929, Miró began experimenting with lithography, and his first etchings date from 1933. From 1934 to 1936 Miró produced a series of Wild Paintings, which manifested a violence that had previously been unseen. “Aggression, sexuality and drama here took a deformed and grotesque human form which was emphasized by strange and unexpected materials and surfaces; in some cases paint was mixed with sand and applied to cardboard, while in others he scrawled graffiti on masonite or over paper prepared with tar.”

Miró’s first major museum retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941. That same year, he began working in ceramics with Josep Lloréns y Artigas and started to concentrate on prints. From 1954-58, Miró worked almost exclusively in these two mediums. In 1958, Miró received a Guggenheim International Award for his murals for the UNESCO building in Paris.

In 1960, Miró’s work underwent a dramatic change when he began to use black to outline shapes and to fill them in. This work is “dramatic, even tragic, with colour often suppressed or counteracted by the weight accorded to black. His faith in abstraction was expressed during this period with particular eloquence in large canvases in which broad strokes of colour were set against sensuously painted backgrounds, as in his paintings of the mid-1920s; the simplicity of gesture and boldness of scale and handling make these among his most impressive and influential later works.”

From 1966 onward, Miró worked intensely in sculpture. These works were based mainly on small objects, which he joined in unique ways. Stones, branches and other objects as well as manufactured items, were joined in a Surrealist style but in a way that also revealed his desire for contact with nature and simple things.

A Miró retrospective took place at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1974. In 1978, the Musée National d’Art Moderne exhibited over 500 works in a major retrospective of his drawings.

Joan Miró died December 25, 1983, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. His final work, completed after his death, was the large sculpture Woman and Bird, which was installed in the gardens on the former site of the Barcelona abattoir.

Sources: Guggenheim Venice, MoMA,

Henri Matisse: 1869-1954

Joan Miró: 1893-1983