The Fauvist movement was the lightning bolt that hit France with a roaring blaze of colour on 15 October 1905, in the Salon d’Automne, Paris. Inspired by post-impressionism, including the early work of Van Gogh and Edward Munch who shifted towards capturing fleeting visual impressions of light and atmosphere, Henri Matisse and André Derain created an exhibition. They filled it with fierce brushstrokes, simplified objects and non-representational, brilliantly saturated colours. Taken aback by this, a critic called Louis Vauxcelles called the artists wild beasts, or in French “les fauves!” However, Matisse and Derain quickly adopted this name, feeling it aptly described their expressive, untamed approach to creation. And so, the Fauvist movement began.
Matisse’s famous Woman with A Hat and his revolutionary Open Window, picturing pastel seas and orange boats, are two prime examples of the classic fauvist subversion of colour. Likewise, Derain’s striking impression of Matisse (his Port de Collioure) featured an unexpected fluorescent green sea and contrasting crimson harbour. His Turning Toad, painted almost entirely in block primary colours, showcases the innovation of colour.
While Matisse and Derain are largely considered the fathers of Fauvism, there are many other artists that contributed to its enormous and global influence. A notable fellow artist is Maurice de Vlaminck, whose River Siene at Chato vibrantly subverts and enhances the colours of houses, trees and meadows with complementary blues and oranges; pinks and greens. Other notable Fauvists, George Braque, Alvert Marquet, and Raoul Dufy all expressed the same passion for pure colours and flatly painted expressive abstraction.
The birth of fauvism was intense, explosive and revolutionary. However it quickly waned as it transitioned further into abstraction and simplification— a movement that would become known as Expressionism. Here, we find the revolutionary work of Kandinsky (who further fragmented reality into abstraction) alongside Marc and Kirchner (who created distorted, psychologically intense art).
Essentially, it took a few artists in the first decade of the 20th century, inspired by their impressionist predecessors, to spark a transition into a world where art didn’t have to attempt to represent physical reality. Instead, art began to stretch into the abstract modernism we are familiar with today.
The legacy of the Fauvists exists not only in galleries, but in every artist who chooses passion over precision, feeling over representative form, and subverts naturally observed colour in favour of igniting their artwork with bright, emotional vibrance.
“Matisse-Woman-with-a-Hat” by roberthuffstutter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.