Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse first attended Law School and became clerk of notary before taking a whole different path with painting. He entered Fine Arts and studied in the workshop of Gustave Moreau. Little by little, he focused on impressionism and discovered Gauguin, Cézanne, Lautrec and Van Gogh. Thereafter, he gave a new impulse to his art by using warm colors and strictly organizing the elements of his paintings. Frequently mixing with Paul Signac from 1904, Matisse had adopted pointillist techniques but he slowly drifted away. Therefore, his paintings were composed of larges flat tints of vivid colors. Exhibiting this new mean of expression alongside Derain and Vlaminck in 1905, his friends and him were given the surname of “fauve”. In 1908, Matisse started producing _The Dance_, destined to the collector Chtchoukine. Genuine master of the fauvism and major plastic artist of his time, he also tried sculpture, engraving, collage and stained-glass window making.