Art Movements | Art History

Running head: ART HISTORY
ART HISTORY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

ART HISTORY1
Art movements have seen to have contributed to the growth of art and are seen to play
a pivotal role in art history. One of the most famous and noteworthy art movements in the
history of art was Fauvism. In the 20 the century, a new style and type of painting was
flourishing and gaining importance in France which was led by les Fauves, a group of
modern artists who belonged to the early 20th century which was known as Fauvism. Fauvism
had major significance and highly contributed to the history of art and also to modern art
which was their radical goal of differentiating and separating color from the representation
and descriptive purpose and allowed the color to be the independent element which created a
huge sense of explosion of the canvas (Barr Jr, 2019). Fauvism was viewed as a huge
refinement and elegance in French painting and also the fact that Paris was the undisputed
center of the world art.
It was seen that the Fauves generally painted the nature like the Impressionists did
however, the Fauvist artist were seen to be invested with a very strong expressive reactions to
the portrayed subjects. The Fauvism movement had given many popular artists whose works
are still admired today; two of the most famous painters of the Fauvism movements were
Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin.
Henri Matisse is one of the most influential and a famous painter of the 20th century
and it has been seen that that his stylistic innovations had fundamentally altered the process
and course of the modern art. Henri Matisse was the leader of the group; he had experimented
with many Post-Impressionist approaches of Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat and many
more which finally led him to the Fauve style (Cohen, 2017). This had highly inspired
Matisse to reject the three dimensional spaces which were traditional back then and seek a
new space which would be defined by the color and its movement.

ART HISTORY2
Henri Matisse was highly significant to the movement as he is considered to be one of
the pioneers alongside Andre Derain to introduce vivid brushstrokes and unmaterialistic
colours into his paintings. His style of painting and the brilliant use of brushstrokes and
colours can be seen in one of his famous paintings, Woman with the Hat which he showcased
at the 1905 exhibition.
Matisse, 1905, Woman with the Hat, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Source: (Metmuseum.org., 2020)
In this painting it can be seen that how brilliantly Matisse has used brisk strokes of the
colours, red, blue and green which makes it forms an expressive view of the painting. The
application of the paint is seen to be in a crude manner which shows that some of the areas of
canvas exposed which during that time appalled the viewers. There are many pieces of art
work by Matisse that have become very famous and it has been seen that his influence later
led to many artists following his footsteps. He has highly contributed to the history of art and