Woman before an aquarium (1921–1923) by Henri Matisse – Poster

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

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

“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.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

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

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

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

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

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

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

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