{foh'-vizm}
At the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris a group of
painters under the leadership of Henri Matisse shocked the art
world with their paintings characterized by brilliant color, expressive brushwork, and flat composition,
as in Matisse's The Green Stripe, Portrait of Mme. Matisse (1905; Statens Museum fur Kunst,
Copenhagen).
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"Luxe, calme et volupte"
by Henri Matisse
Musée d'Orsay
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The critic Louis Vauxcelles, on visiting the show, called the painters the "Wild Beasts,"
or "Les Fauves"; the pejorative remark was exploited by hostile critics, and the name stuck.
Vincent van Gogh,
Paul Gauguin, the Nabis, and the neoimpressionists (see neoimpressionism)
were the most important influences on the Fauves. Some of them had been students of Gustave Moreau at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts; these included Matisse, Albert Marquet, Georges Rouault, Charles Camoir, Jean Puy,
and Henri Manguin. André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck had painted together at Chatou. A contingent
from Le Havre, Achille Emile Orthon Friesz, Raoul Dufy, and Georges Braque, joined the group after seeing
Matisse's work. Kees van Dongen, a Dutch painter, joined them when he settled in Paris.
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"Studio at Guelma Alley"
by Raoul Dufy
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
BUY DUFY PRINTS
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The Fauves never issued a theoretical manifesto. By the
time Matisse wrote his "Notes of a Painter" in 1908, the peak of Fauvism was over. Matisse himself moved
from the spontaneous and exuberant use of color that characterized Fauvism to a more decorative formalism.
Although Fauvism was a short-lived movement, it was influential; the German expressionists, particularly
Wassily Kandinsky and Alexey von Jawlensky in Munich, and the Die Brucke group in Dresden were heavily
indebted to it. (See expressionism.)
The Fauves represented the first break with the artistic
traditions of the past. The movement's emphasis on formal values and expressive use of color, line, and
brushwork helped liberate painting from the representational expectations that had dominated Western art
since the Renaissance. Fauvism was the first explosive 20th-century art movement.
Ida K. Rigby
Source: The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release #9.01, © 1997.
Bibliography: Gaston Diel,
The Fauves (1975; out-of-print);
James D. Herbert,
The Cultural Politics of Fauve Painting (1992);
Judi Freeman, et al.,
The Fauve Landscape (1990; out-of-print);
Jean Leymarie,
Fauves and Fauvism (1986; out-of-print);
Sarah Whitfield,
Fauvism (1990).
Images: Henri Matisse - "Luxe, calme et volupte", Raoul Dufy - "Studio at Guelma Alley"
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