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I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

Henri Matisse

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Henri Matisse
Age: 84 †
Born: 1869
Born: December 31
Died: 1954
Died: November 3
Artist
Designer
Drawer
Exlibrist
Graphic Artist
Painter
Printmaker
Sculptor
Le Cateau
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse
Henri Emile Benoît Matisse
Henri Emile Benoit Matisse
Anri Matiss
Henri-Emile-Benoît Matisse
Henri-Emile-Benoit Matisse
H. Matisse
matisse h.
h. matisse
matisse henri
Henri-Matisse
Matisse
Drawing
Emotion
Tree
Common
Shan
Free
Faithfully
Language
Copying
Identifying
Leaves

More quotes by Henri Matisse

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The Barnes Foundation is the only sane place to see art in America.
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When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.
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Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.
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A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man.
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When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.
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Precision is not reality
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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.
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After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.
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You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.
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Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use.
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What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.
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I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been no more than a medium as it were.
Henri Matisse
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I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
Henri Matisse
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The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort.
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Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.
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I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.
Henri Matisse
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It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
Henri Matisse
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He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices he is free and nothing holds him back.
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...I am driven on by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture.
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There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.
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