Henri Matisse Quotes

I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.

When I started to paint I felt transported into a kind of paradise… In everyday life I was usually bored and vexed… Starting to paint I felt gloriously free.

The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.

When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.

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

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

I didn’t expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I’m living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.

A certain color tones you up. It’s the concentration of timbres.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.

The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual but also from a whole acquired force, the civilization which precedes us. One cannot do just anything. A talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. If he only used his gifts, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us.

Arrival = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.