Self-portrait in a striped T-shirt (1906) by Henri Matisse - Poster

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

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

“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.”

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

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

“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.”

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