Fauvism was an art movement made up of 20th century artists known as Les Fauve. Their name was coined by french art critic Louis Vauxcelles who was viewing one of the groups exhibitions, headed by Henri Matisse. The wild brush strokes, bright colors, and simplified design prompted Vauxcelles to call them Fauves, or “Wild Beasts”. Fauvism tried combining impressionism with dramatic colors in the attempt to combine the straightforwardness of impressionism with vivid colors’ great capacity for evoking emotion. they had been tremendously influenced by Van Gough, who also combined impressionism with vivid colors but Fauve artists went even further in liberating color from its distinctive function and using it for both expressive and structural ends (Gardner, 2005). The colors of the paintings are non realistic and the artists use heavy amounts of paint in objects’ centers, and fade into their borders as can clearly be seen in ”Open Window, Collioure” by Henri Matisse, painted in 1905 (see below)
The movement began in Paris at the Salon d’Automne in 1905 and consisted of artists such as Vlaminck, Derain, Marquet, Rouault, Camoin, and Valtat. Matisse was the main figure though, so much so that Fauvism lasted only as long as its originator, Henri Matisse (1869-1954), fought to find the artistic freedom he needed (Pioch 2002). by 1908 many of its painters had moved on to Cubism.
Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.7
Works Sited
Helen Gardner, Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: The western Perspective. (Wadsworth Publishing; 12 edition, February 23, 2005), pp. 738-739
Nicolas Pioch. The Web Museum: Fauvism. 14 Oct 2002
(http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/tl/20th/fauvism.html)
