Colour Rules OK

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• Colour Rules! OK?

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Fact File
When and where?
Why Fauves?
Which artists?
Colour and form
Click on the buttons to find out more
Web search
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When and where?

• 1905
• Salon dAutomne, Paris
• Artists exhibiting in room 7 were Matisse,
  Derain, Vlaminck
• Assistant Dufy
• Short-lived movement 1905 1908
• Transitional stage for most of these painters

Woman with Hat, Matisse 1905
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Four Fauves
Click on a picture to see more
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Henri Matisse 1869 - 1954

• Matisse was the leader of the Fauves
• Colour was his passion throughout his life
• He said

When I use a green it is not grass. When I use a
blue it is not sky.
Click to look more closely at the painting
Open Window, Collioure, 1905 National Gallery of
Art, Washington
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Complementary colours pink/turquoise orange/blue
Open Window, Collioure, 1905
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Colour theory
Complementary colours appear opposite each other
on the colour wheel e.g.red/green, blue/orange,
and violet/yellow. When juxtaposed with its
complementary, a colour seems brighter and more
vivid. It can even appear to change the size of
the shape. The red in the two examples below is
the same colour and size.

• Colour is a wavelength of light. We see blue
  because other wavelengths are absorbed by the
  surface, which reflects only the blue wavelength
  back to us.
• The subtractive primaries pigment primaries
  are red, blue and yellow - or more precisely
  magenta, cyan and yellow.
• When mixed together they make black, but when
  mixed in pairs they form the additive primaries
  light primaries.

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Maurice de Vlaminck 1876 - 1958
Landscape with Red Trees, 1907
Still Life, 1907
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André Derain 1880 - 1954
Mountains at Collioure,1905
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André Derain 1880 - 1954
Westminster Bridge,1906
The Turning Road
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Raoul Dufy 1877 - 1953
Chantilly, 1939
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Why Fauves?
Cest Donatello dans la cage aux fauves!Louis
Vauxcelles, 1905

• When art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, saw their
  paintings in the Salon, with a traditional
  sculpture of a boy in the middle, he said that it
  was like a Donatello in the wild beasts cage.
  The name stuck and the room became known as the
  cage.
• The sensational publicity made the artists famous
  overnight
• Can you think of an artist or group of artists
  who have benefited from bad publicity in recent
  times in the same way?

Its Donatello in the wild beasts cage!
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Colour and form
Why has Fauvism been called the first truly
abstract style?

• Departure from reality of what is seen
  non-objective art
• Non-naturalistic colours
• Colour for colours sake
• Flat colour no 3D shading or tonal modelling
• Colour is the subject matter whether the painting
  is a landscape, portrait or still life
• Details are edited out simplify, select
  modify from nature

The Dance, Matisse, 1910
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Colour and form
Why has Fauvism been called the first truly
abstract style?

• Experimentation with relationship of colours to
  each other
• Pure, saturated colour straight from the tube
• Colour mixed by the eye not on the palette
• Colour rhythm movement
• Colour emotional force
• Colour creates light not imitates it
• Shape pattern surface

The Dance, Matisse, 1910
Back to questions
Colour theory
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Web search
When you have finished looking at the
presentation, choose one of the four artists and
find out how his work developed after Fauvism.
Use the links below to start your search

• www.nga.gov./feature/artnation/fauve
• The National Gallery of Art, Washington. A
  virtual tour of Fauve painting
• www.sanderhome.com/Fauves/
• A personal site dedicated to the Fauves useful
  summary
• www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/tl/20th/fauvism.html
• The Web Museum Paris
• www.artchive.com
• Look up Matisse, Derain, Valminck or Dufy

Matisse Portrait with Green Stripe, 1911