Fauvism

About Fauvism

Fauvism burst into view at the Paris Salon d'Automne of 1905, where Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and their friends hung canvases of such unmixed colour that a critic dubbed them 'fauves', wild beasts. The name stuck.

The painters had absorbed the colour of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and the dotted touch of the Neo-Impressionists, then loosened both. Trees turn red, faces green and shadows violet; paint goes on in flat patches and quick strokes, often with bare canvas between. Matisse and Derain spent the summer of 1905 painting together at Collioure, and Matisse's Woman with a Hat (1905) was among the pictures that caused the uproar. Derain's views of the Thames in London blaze with orange and blue, and Raoul Dufy and Kees van Dongen took up the style. By 1908 most had moved on, but their freed colour fed Expressionism.