Styles and features of Fauvism

By: Tapatee Roy Chowdhury September 29, 2024

During the beginning of the 20th century a new form in painting emerged which also seemed to be an ultimate extension of Post Impression. It started roughly around 1904 and this style became more popular in France, featuring bold wild brush strokes, symbolic use of colors and an extreme form of simplification which led to a much higher degree of abstraction.

Coining of the term “Fauvism”

Though in contemporary times this movement is well known for paving the path towards more modernism and abstraction in art, the meaning of its name has a very interesting story. The name was coined when the art critic Louis Vauxcelles was shocked after looking at the paintings exhibited by artists in Paris. This was held in Salon d'Automne in the year 1905 and he defined the works being exhibited as the style of “les Fauves” which translates into “wild beasts”. The purpose of critiquing this was mainly due to the wild application of pure colors in their works which mostly focused on imparting a strong expressive reaction of the subject matter being painted. Many scholars also mention Henry Rousseau’s work which might have contributed to the naming of this group of artists. Even though Rousseau was not a Fauvist, his work was sharing the same room with the works of Fauvist painters. His painting consisted of a huge scene from the jungle named- “The hungry Lion throws itself on the Antelope.”

Fauvist Palette

The scientific color theories that developed during the 19th century intrigued the artists to work with complementary colors in their paintings. On a color wheel, complementary colors can be seen placed opposite to each other. The sole purpose of using such colors was to create a high contrasting effect because the combination and use of complementary colors provide a high impact color combination on viewers. Colors used in paintings have an expressive quality, vibrant hues, spontaneous brushstrokes reflecting the mood and aura of the subjects. The artists did not mix the colors with any pigment or prepare secondary colors before applying on the canvas. They often applied directly from the tube resulting in non-naturalistic wild dabs of loose paints. The colors were hence pure, bright and bold and this created a strong emotional impact on the viewers.

Inspiration from Post-Impressionism

Henri Matisse is considered as a prime figure of this art movement. He had been experimenting with Post Impressionist approaches and he was practicing the approaches used by artists like Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh. The use of red, blue and green colors were strikingly crude and evoked an emotional state of the subject which was depicted through the movement of colors. Henri Matisse once acknowledged that it was after seeing the works of Australian Impressionist painter, John Russell, he chose to opt for vibrant color applications leaving behind his palette of earthy colors. He considered Russell as his mentor and mentioned that he had learnt about color theory from Russell. In the year 1910 a Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin requested Matisse to paint a large decorative panel for the Heritage Museum in Saint Petersburg. This painting known as “Dance” has been a major turning point in Matisse’s artistic career. The work shows a composition of dancing figures on a very simplified landscape against a deep blue sky. The dancing nudes painted with a strong red in the contrasting cool background colors reveal the immense fascination of Matisse with aboriginal and primitive forms. A study sketch version of this work is showcased at MoMA in New York which bears the title- “Dance(I)”.

Matisse actively experimented with not only his paintings but sculpture, paper cut-outs and printmaking. He created images from cut-outs of colored papers and explored other mediums to create dynamic forms of art. One of the most well known works is “The Snail”- a work created by pigmenting gouache on paper and cut and pasted on a white sheet. This work, done during the year 1952-53 consists of geometrical patterns and arrangement of complementary colors after drawing the snail on the paper. This is considered one of the major examples of his final body of works as after this he suffered from poor health conditions and had stopped painting.

Fauvist Sculptures

Even though painting was the dominant medium of Matisse, during the late 1920s he took a break from painting and he was actively creating sculptures. Among his sculptural works the most well known are, Madeline (1901-03), Reclining Nude (1907-29) and Head of Jeanette (1910-11). Madeline is considered to be an important work which was cast in bronze and shows his signature style where he experimented with contours of hands and limbs in space. He did not consider himself as an instinctive sculptor and said that- “I sculpt like a painter and not a sculptor”. Many sculptures that he created in clay were inspired from his own paintings, for example the “Reclining Nude II” which posture is first seen in his painting “The Joy Of Life”. Most of his works were casted in bronze and represented a fluid movement of the figures often highlighting feminine sensuality and organic simplicity. He created more than 70 sculptures and used them to understand and explore how representation of thoughts works in paintings.

Fauvist strokes by Vlaminck

Maurice de Vlaminck, a renowned French painter working during this period, initially started his career as a violinist being born into a musician’s family. Later he got inspired by the approaches of Van Gogh too and started using direct colors for his paintings. When Maurice began his paintings, his works were more inclined to the Impressionist genre. He was also a close friend of Andre Derain, another important artist of this art movement. Both of them together with Matisse put up their first exhibition in 1905. The Seine at Chatou is an oil painting by Maurice which is often considered as a forerunner of Fauvism. This work made with small bold brushstrokes shows a generous application of primary colors red, blue and yellow. Many artists were fascinated by the simplicity of the small village of Chatou at the bank of River Seine, near Paris known for its narrow patches of land situated in the shimmering blue waters. The river occupies most of the painting and the horizon line has been shown close to the top edge of the canvas. The sky has the typical Fauvist approach of blue, white and gray patches of paint. The orange trees on the left, close to the barely visible patch of yellow land and the small yellow boat in the foreground of the painting all have a hint of outline on certain areas which is also seen as a bold representation in the style of Fauvism. The tip of a red boat is also visible on the right end of the canvas which helps viewers to imagine the visual continuation beyond the limited pictorial space on the canvas. For a few years Maurice lived near Chatou, created multiple works and exhibited with his friends Derain and Matisse.

Vlaminck also painted the portrait of his friend Derain in Fauvism style. Created in 1905, this painting captures his playful yet conscious use of primary colors in the form of vibrant dabs of oil paint which once again displays the influence of the techniques used by Vincent van Gogh. This is considered as a mature work by Vlaminck where the life size head is shown in a close up view without much suggestion of background or surrounding space. Stark dark outlines are visible defining the contours of hair, head, eyes and collar lines. The face has been painted with bright red instead of the usual colors used for a portrait. He used vivid strokes of chrome yellow on the forehead, left cheek and jaw line followed by a fearless patch of green which is visible over the nose. There has been less attention to details of the usual representation of painting portraits, rather a daring approach with grays and blues on the eyelids and mustache. Maurice has been always known for his exuberant paint application and vibrant use of bold colors.

Style of Derain

Andre Derain was born in Chatou and initially began his study in engineering. Alongside he went to the countryside for painting outdoor landscapes and took painting classes from Eugene Anatole Carriere. There he met Matisse and later in the year 1900 he met with Vlaminck and shared the studio together. Together they went out for painting in the neighborhood. It was Matisse who convinced Derain’s parents to leave engineering and dedicate his life to painting. He became an important painter of Fauvism well known for his use of unnatural colors and crude brush strokes creating a vivid fragmentation of hues. Later during the 1940s, his works show his Neo classicist approach of the 17th century inspired specially from paintings by Diego Velazquez and Gustave Courbet, stretching back to traditional representations in history of art. “The Painter and his family” and “The Girl Cutting apple” are few examples of such works where Derain has painted intimate, domestic scenes as a response to withdraw himself from the outer political situations of the inter-war period.

Other important Fauvist painters were Kees van Dongen, Charles Camoin, Henri-Charles Manguin. For the artists, Fauvism was a transitional stage where they were experimenting with the movement of color planes and learning new ways to express emotions in the form of unblended colors. They abandoned the urge to show three dimensionality or extreme naturalistic depiction of subjects which later became an important pathway to Cubism and Expressionism.

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