Top 160 Henri Matisse Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “One must, of course, have one’s entire experience behind one and not have lost the freshness of instinct.”

— Henri Matisse

102. “I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.”

— Henri Matisse

103. “When you’re out of willpower, you can call on stubbornness.”

— Henri Matisse

104. “My curves are not crazy.”

— Henri Matisse

105. “Seeing is in itself a creative act which requires effort.”

— Henri Matisse

106. “A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.”

— Henri Matisse

107. “The main function of color should be to serve expression.”

— Henri Matisse

108. “Jazz is rhythm and meaning.”

— Henri Matisse

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

— Henri Matisse

110. “Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation – I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.”

— Henri Matisse

111. “All art worthy of the name is religious.”

— Henri Matisse

112. “A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.”

— Henri Matisse

113. “I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.”

— Henri Matisse

114. “Truly, I’m not joking when I thank my lucky stars for the awful operation I had, since it has made me young again and philosophical which means that I don’t want to fritter away the new lease on life I’ve been given.”

— Henri Matisse

115. “When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.”

— Henri Matisse

116. “The wall around the window does not create two worlds.”

— Henri Matisse

117. “I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.”

— Henri Matisse

118. “An artist who wants to transpose a composition onto a larger canvas must conceive it over again in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just fill in the squares into which he has divided his canvas.”

— Henri Matisse

119. “Cutting into color reminds me of the sculptor’s direct carving.”

— Henri Matisse

120. “I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.”

— Henri Matisse

121. “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.”

— Henri Matisse

122. “If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone.”

— Henri Matisse

123. “I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.”

— Henri Matisse

124. “Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they wanted to safeguard their freedom.”

— Henri Matisse

125. “Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.”

— Henri Matisse

126. “Modern art spreads joy around by its color, which calms us.”

— Henri Matisse

127. “A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.”

— Henri Matisse

128. “I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.”

— Henri Matisse

129. “In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.”

— Henri Matisse

130. “Siempre hay flores para aquellos que desean verlas.”

— Henri Matisse

131. “The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make his own when he has grasped their deepest significance.”

— Henri Matisse

132. “My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model...”

— Henri Matisse

133. “The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.”

— Henri Matisse

134. “What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure.”

— Henri Matisse

135. “There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.”

— Henri Matisse

136. “I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation.”

— Henri Matisse

137. “The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness.”

— Henri Matisse

138. “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.”

— Henri Matisse

139. “It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.”

— Henri Matisse

140. “The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn’t harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it.”

— Henri Matisse

141. “The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.”

— Henri Matisse

142. “The truly original artist invents his own signs.”

— Henri Matisse

143. “Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive.”

— Henri Matisse

144. “In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.”

— Henri Matisse

145. “A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.”

— Henri Matisse

146. “With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.”

— Henri Matisse

147. “What matters most to me? To work with my model until I have it enough in me to be able to improvise, to let my hand run free...”

— Henri Matisse

148. “I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn’t one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.”

— Henri Matisse

149. “The residuum of another’s expression can never be related to one’s own feeling.”

— Henri Matisse

150. “It has always bothered me that I don’t paint like everyone else.”

— Henri Matisse