Fauvism, based on the exaltation of pure colour, was the first art revolution of the twentieth century. It was not a school, complete with programme and theory, but the result of the temporary conjunction of a number of painters, actuated by the same motives and brought together the kind of chance meetings that so often create highly productive movements. In the famous Salon d’Automne of 1905 twelve colourists, grouped around Matisse and conscious of the similarity of their views, exhibited together. The explosive forces of their work provoked a scandal. They came together again for the Salon des Indépendants of 1906. Louis Vauxcelles, the art critic, noticing a small bronze in the Florentine manner by the sculptor Marque n the middle of the hall full of the riotous colours of those who were still called the ‘Incoherents’ or ‘Invertebrates’, exclaimed: ‘Donatello parmi les Fauves!’ ( Donatello among the wild beasts). The name Fauves caught on, and by the time of the Salon d’Automne of the same year it was in general use. The history of Fauvism is a brief one, beginning in 1905 and reaching its full development in 1907. It may be useful to go over briefly the succession of exchanges and contacts that assisted in its creation and crystallized around the dominant personality of Matisse, the oldest in experience and undisputed leader of the movements. Three main groups of different origin (joined by Van Dongen, an independent) came under his sway, and rallied to his principles during those heroic years: the group of the Atelier Gustave Moreau and the Académie Carrière ( Marquet, Manguin, Camoin, Puy), the Chatou group ( Derain, Vlaminck) and, lastly, the Havre group ( Friesz, Dufy, Braque).

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There are many types of art that have developed over years and remain very popular, yet there are also those that eventually just disappear. Fauvism is a style of art that isn’t as well-known because it didn’t last longer than a few years. Fauvism was an interesting style of art because it consisted of various individual styles that were indiscreetly related to one another (Janson 771). In 1905 is when the artists group got their name fauves, which was from a critic that had seen them at a large exhibition of Cezanne (Getlein 504). Fauves means the “wild beast,” which obviously says that they presented bright, new work that had never seen before. Artist, such as Henry Matisse and Andre Derain, began creating this style of art from their own ideas and joined them as one to come up with unique and colorful pieces of art that are still admired by many today. They expressed their work with “emotionally explosive” color and distinctive brush strokes that helped to identify their pieces from other classical styles. Each artist tried to keep their own ideas going and keep each painting a little bit more distinctive from the others. “Their work represents an odd time in modern art history. Most of the artists were friends- or

They took ideas from those that inspired them; created art pieces that was meaningful to them and then joined all of their ideas together to create a new style of art called fauvism. An artist that was well-known of his time was Wassily Kandinsky, which was a Russian who wasn’t apart of fauvism. Each fauves artist had a different idea in what they were painting about, but they all had the same goal to take a basic picture, such as landscape, and transform it into something totally different that had meaning. He had developed his own group called Der Blaue Reiter, where he was the leader. Also, through their new development of fauvism, he used bright, vibrant colors to make each shape, line, and object stand out differently and with meaning. ” Kandinsky did not paint his art with like the fauves, but instead tried to use the same perspective and outlook and some points as they did to create and move on to a new and different outlook. ” Smithsonian Oct. There are many works that he created that show and express his strong ability to create outstanding art. According to Janson, “It was the liberating influence of the Fauves that permitted Kandinsky to put this approach into practice. In the View of Collioure, Derain is contributing it to Van Gogh through using “whirlwinds of short brush strokes,” yet Van Gogh would have never use the other techniques that he was using, for he would have felt that they were incomplete (Getlein 504).

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Fauvism was the first of the avant-garde movements that flourished in France in the early years of the twentieth century. The Fauve painters were the first to break with Impressionism as well as with older, traditional methods of perception. Their spontaneous, often subjective response to nature was expressed in bold, undisguised brushstrokes and high-keyed, vibrant colors directly from the tube. 

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) and André Derain (French, 1880–1954) introduced unnaturalistic color and vivid brushstrokes into their paintings in the summer of 1905, working together in the small fishing port of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast (1975.1.194; 1982.179.29). When their pictures were exhibited later that year at the Salon d’Automne in Paris (Matisse, The Woman with a Hat), they inspired the witty critic Louis Vauxcelles to call themfauves (“wild beasts”) in his review for the magazine Gil Blas. This term was later applied to the artists themselves.

The Fauves were a loosely shaped group of artists sharing a similar approach to nature, but they had no definitive program. Their leader was Matisse, who had arrived at the Fauve style after earlier experimenting with the various Post-Impressionist styles of Van Gogh, Gauguin, andCézanne, and the Neo-Impressionism of Seurat, Cross, and Signac. These influences inspired him to reject traditional three-dimensional space and seek instead a new picture space defined by the movement of color planes (1999.363.38; The Young Sailor I; 1999.363.41). 

Another major Fauve was Maurice de Vlaminck (French, 1876–1958), who might be called a “natural” Fauve because his use of highly intense color corresponded to his own exuberant nature. Vlaminck took the final step toward embracing the Fauve style (1999.363.84; 1999.363.83) after seeing the second large retrospective exhibition of Van Gogh’s work at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1905, and the Fauve paintings produced by Matisse and Derain in Collioure. 

As an artist, Derain occupied a place midway between the impetuous Vlaminck and the more controlled Matisse. He had worked with Vlaminck in Chatou, near Paris, intermittently from 1900 on (“School of Chatou”), and spent the summer of 1905 with Matisse in Collioure. In 1906, he also painted some fifteen scenes of London in a more restrained palette (1999.363.18). 

Other important Fauvists were Kees van Dongen, Charles Camoin, Henri-Charles Manguin, Othon Friesz, Jean Puy, Louis Valtat, and Georges Rouault. These were joined in 1906 by Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy. 

For most of these artists, Fauvism was a transitional, learning stage. By 1908, a revived interest in Paul Cézanne’s vision of the order and structure of nature had led many of them to reject the turbulent emotionalism of Fauvism in favor of the logic of Cubism. Braque became the cofounder with Picasso of Cubism. Derain, after a brief flirtation with Cubism, became a widely popular painter in a somewhat neoclassical manner. Matisse alone pursued the course he had pioneered, achieving a sophisticated balance between his own emotions and the world he painted (1984.433.16). 

The Fauvist movement has been compared to German Expressionism, both projecting brilliant colors and spontaneous brushwork, and indebted to the same late nineteenth-century sources, especially Van Gogh. The French were more concerned with the formal aspects of pictorial organization, while the German Expressionists were more emotionally involved in their subjects.

Rewald, Sabine. “Fauvism”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm (October 2004)

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