Interior with a Violin Case (1918-1919) by Henri Matisse - Poster

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“If the world were clear, art would not be.”

“Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another.”

“Art hovers around the truth, but with the firm intention not to burn itself.”

“Art is the reflection that the dazzled human soul gives back of the splendor of the beautiful.”

“Beauty is always strange. I do not mean that it is deliberately, coldly strange, for in that case it would be a monster off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a little strangeness, a naive strangeness.”

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”

“One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“Art is born of constraints, lives of struggles, and dies of freedom.”

“Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“One must be absolutely modern.”