Fauvism
Description
Fauvism (/foʊvɪzəm/ FOH-viz-əm) is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of les Fauves (French pronunciation: [le fov], the wild beasts), a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain and Henri Matisse. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Henri Matisse
Supreme leader and visionary theorist of Fauvism who liberated color from naturalistic description, using pure, saturated pigments to evoke emotional joy and spatial harmony.
André Derain
Co-founder who worked alongside Matisse in Collioure during the summer of 1905, translating Mediterranean light into explosive, blocky brushstrokes of unblended primary colors.
Maurice de Vlaminck
Self-taught Fauve who boasted he had never set foot inside the Louvre, squeezing pure paint directly from tubes onto canvases in visceral, Van Gogh-inspired landscapes.
Raoul Dufy
Prominent Fauve who adopted Matisse's bold color theories to paint lively regattas, flags, and coastal promenades with joyous, rapid linear shorthand and bright washes.
Albert Marquet
Lifelong friend of Matisse who exhibited in the famous 1905 Fauve cage, combining simplified drawing with subtle, luminous tonal harmonies across urban harbor scenes.
Kees van Dongen
Dutch-born Fauve master known for sensuous, electrically colored portraits of Parisian cabaret dancers and society women rendered with bold emerald and crimson contours.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
The term 'Fauves' (Wild Beasts) was coined by French art critic Louis Vauxcelles at the 1905 Salon d'Automne when, upon seeing a classical Renaissance-style sculpture surrounded by the intensely vibrant canvases of Matisse and Derain, he exclaimed, 'Donatello chez les fauves!' (Donatello among the wild beasts!).
↗ Source: metmuseum.org
During the summer of 1905 in the Mediterranean fishing village of Collioure, Henri Matisse and André Derain worked side-by-side in intense heat, liberating color from objective reality by squeezing pure, unmixed pigments directly from tubes onto their canvases.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk