Woman Before an Aquarium (1921–1923) 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.”

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

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

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

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

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

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“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.”

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

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

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