Luxe, Calme et Volupté (1904) by Henri Matisse: Poster

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Tears fall in my heart as rain falls on the town.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

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

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

“One must be absolutely modern.”