Fauvism

A Donatello amongst the wild beasts

One of the first avant-garde art movements of the 20th century, the Fauvists were known for their distinct, expressive brushstrokes – discarding realistic use of colour, in favour of bold, vibrant palettes. Largely a French movement, they primarily painted Mediterranean landscapes and cityscapes, as well as portraits.

It was developed by its two most famous practitioners Henri Matisse and André Derain in 1905. Matisse was influenced by Neo and Post Impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Paul Signac. He’d experimented in these styles, but had never found real success, writing “all my life I have felt hunted down, because I didn’t paint like anyone else”.

In the summer of 1905 Matisse invited Derain to the French Mediterranean village of Collioure, where there followed a brilliant outpouring of creative energy. They worked together to consciously break the rules and create something new and radical. Matisse wrote “We were at that point, like children before nature. And we let our temperament speak. I spurned everything on principle and worked as I felt. Only by colour.”

Fauvist paintings were first exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1905. Their radical works were controversial, with one prominent art critic of the day Louis Vauxcelles gifting the movement its name. The paintings were displayed alongside a sculpture by Donatello, which he famously described at the time as “a Donatello amongst the wild beasts.” Or in French – les Fauves (the wild beasts). The name stuck.

Following the Salon their work remained controversial, but more artists gravitated towards the style such as Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Rouault. They often applied thick daubs of paint to the canvas directly from the tubes, resulting in highly textured and brilliant splashes of colour. Their loose, non-realistic style paved the way for further abstraction in future movements, and was very influential on the German Expressionists.

It is somewhat of an anomaly amongst many movements of the time, in that it was not tied to a specific ideology or way of thinking. Perhaps this is why it was relatively short-lived, really only blooming from 1905-1910. This was perfectly summarised by Robert Hughes – “What they produced was less a movement, than an episode. A meeting of instincts among painters who liked strong sensation, but had no binding theory. If you can imagine an aesthetic based solely on exhilaration, this came close to it.”

Interestingly many of these painters were later to abandon Fauvism as they moved onto different styles. For instance, André Derain moved onto Cubism, and then into a more neo-classical style. To further illustrate the cross-pollination of ideas that was happening at the time, Georges Braque was one of the early painters in the Fauvist style before founding Cubism with Pablo Picasso. 

I’ve explored the possibilities of giving my photographs a painterly aesthetic, through the Fauvist’s use of vibrant colours and expressive brush strokes.*

* All photographs in this chapter have been digitally ‘repainted’ using an iPad and Apple Pencil in Procreate, with further editing in Photoshop.