This style emerged around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, however the group only had three exhibitions together from 1905 to 1907.

Les Fauves in French means the wild beasts and this was the name given to fauvism, an avant -garde movement in the early 20th century led by the painters Henri Matisse and  André Derain.The Fauves were a group of French painters who were influenced by the bright colours used by post-impressionist painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin.

By 1908 many of the artists involved moved on to other styles. Georges Braque, for instance, moved on to cubism.

Fauvist main characteristic was the use of exaggerated colors as the subject of the painting was something secondary. Sometimes they represented shadows with greens and purples instead of grey.

Like the impressionist artists who had preceded them, the fauvists painted subjects from the natural landscape—but the vibrant colors the fauvists used in their paintings charged the subject matter with a sense of the unnatural.

Main artists

1 MATISSE

The most prominent member of the group, Henri Matisse, developed the fauvist style after exploring the postimpressionist techniques of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat.

As Matisse’s own style developed, he abandoned the traditional ways of depicting three-dimensional space. Instead, he decided to define the picture space by using contrasting colors. Throughout his career, Matisse followed the course he had pioneered in fauvism by continuing to use bright colors in imaginative ways. For many of the other artists associated with fauvism, the movement served as an important transitional stage in their artistic development,

2- DERAIN

André Derain was the co-founder of Fauvism with Matisse.Derain’s fauvist landscapes consist entirely of pure colors applied with short and energetic brushstrokes.

3– MAURICE DE VLAMINCK

Vlaminck’s works contain agitated curved lines of intense color that exhibit the influence of Van Gogh’s expressive brushwork. He used painting straight from the paint tube and applied in thick daubs. His style evolved and was close to Cezanne´s last period. Vlaminck´s landscapes regained strength in the composition.

4- GEORGES BRAQUE

During his fauvist stage, Georges Braque used bright spots of color to create rhythm and structure within his paintings.

Georges Braque, went on to play a major role in another chapter of art history. He became the cofounder (along with Pablo Picasso) of cubism.

VIDEOS TO REVIEW:

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NOTES ON FAUVISM: