The Arty Farty Diary: Fauvism

Fauvism which is French for "the wild beasts" which was a loose group of early 20th Century modern artists who's works emphasised strong colour over representationalism, it was one of the avant-garde (advanced art) movements that grew in France. It stranded from Impressionism which was its predecessor art movement, the Fauvists response to nature was expressed in bold brushstrokes and vibrant colours from the paint tube and had no alteration to the shade/tint.

They were named the Fauvists and nicknamed the wild beasts as a use of slander at first but their over-representative, loud and abstract use of colour is what makes the work unique and was often described as a transitional learning stage for the artist who were a part of it. Fauvist work is very expressive since they wanted to to change the strutter of vision and nature which is why many artists found the emotionalism of Fauvism too much and chose to favour the more logical style of Cubism.

Henri Matisse was one of the key leaders in Fauvism and both he and Andre Derain were the ones to introduce unnautralistic colour and deep brushstrokes, this forged the way of the style of Fauvism. I surprisingly liked Matisse's work, I say that because I don' t really like abstract work but I think by looking at his work and then going on to do some life drawing in a similar style made me appreciate and like the style a lot more.

"Portrait of Madame Matisse," 1905.

"Women with a Hat," 1905.

"Dishes and Fruit," 1901.

Andre Derain along with Matisse was a leader of Fauvism and he had a similar style to Matisse but there is a different feel to it, Derain seems to have more mark making into his work and to me seems to have a flow of direction in the work - unlike Matisse who has a lot of block shapes. Derain's work did remind me of Vincent van Gogh work with all the mark making ,but his pieces of course have a lot more colour than van Gogh which have similar colour palettes within each pieces.