Rise of Fauvism

Fauvism was a short-lived but influential movement in French painting whose artists used intense, non-naturalistic colour applied in bold strokes. It took its name from a critic who, seeing the work of Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and their friends at the Salon d'Automne in Paris, called the painters wild beasts, or fauves. These artists rejected the careful colour realism of the Impressionists and let colour carry emotion and structure, drawing inspiration from Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat. The movement lasted only a few years, until about 1910, as its members went in different directions, but it influenced Expressionism and the development of modern art.

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