![]() He apparently understood them as symbolizing the beauty of divine creation, the evocations of paradise. It is also likely that Henri, who by 1912 was already familiar with the Islamic art, was interested in the meaning of gardens, water and vegetation in their culture. The mere name “goldfish” defines these creatures as ideal inhabitants of an idyllic place, which the artist was obviously seeking when he travelled to North Africa. They should be thus understood as a kind of shorthand for paradise in this painting. For him, the goldfish came to symbolize this tranquil state of mind and, at the same time, became evocative of a paradise lost, a subject frequently represented in art. Life under the hot sun appeared to him relaxed and contemplative. Henri admired the Moroccans’ lifestyle as many other Europeans who visited North Africa at that time. Matisse was impressed how the local population would day-dream for hours, gazing into goldfish bowls. Actually, goldfish have obtained his spectial attention during his visit to Tangier, Morocco, where he stayed from the end of January until April 1912. But hardly he was interested in them before viewing a large exhibition of Islamic art in Munich in 1910, and then spending two months in Spain studying Moorish art. only become what they are to me when I see them together with the color red."īut why was the painter so interested in goldfish? These beautiful beings were introduced to Europe from East Asia in the 17th century. ![]() He once remarked, " Where I got the color red-to be sure, I just don't know. Henri Matisse made the striking scarlet to be a protagonist in this painting. Although he subsequently softened his palette, the bold orange, scarlet and crimson are reminiscent of the painter’s fauvist years, which continued to influence his use of color throughout his career. This technique was used extensively by the Fauves, and is particularly striking in Matisse’s earlier works. They appear opposite each other on a colour wheel, and, when placed next to one another in the painting, make each other look even brighter. Pairs of colors, like blue and orange, as well as green and red, are complementary colors. The bright scarlet strongly contrasts with more subtle pinks and greens that surround the fish bowl and pinky-turquoise background. The goldfish immediately catches our attention due to their color. His Goldfish, 1912 is a bright example of his distinguished art style. He continued to use the distinctive fauvist traits of bright emotive colors, plain shapes and painterly mark-making throughout his career. The contrast to traditional art was so striking that the name Fauvists has stuck with them for good.īy 1908-1910, most of the main artists in the Fauvism group had moved away from the expressive emotionalism, except for Matisse. When the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles saw the work of Henri Matisse and André Derain at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1905, he named them les fauves (French ‘the wild beasts’). The Fauves produced bright, emotional paintings with strong colors, simple shapes, and fierce brushwork. The artist was initially labelled as a leader of Fauvism – the art style developed in France in contrast to the dark disturbing Symbolist art of the fin de siècle, or turn of the century. He used color as a homogeneous, primary substance, while complementing it with brilliant draughtsmanship. Henri Matisse is considered to be the 20th century’s most important French painter. It was in his style to revise one subject over and over again, thus pushing his art further. ![]() He has made about 9 paintings as well as drawings and prints featuring these tiny creatures. From around this time, the artist has recurrently chosen goldfish as a subject in his art work. Goldfish from the Pushkin Museum of Art in Moscow is one of the series of painintings made in spring and early summer of 1912 by Henri Matisse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |