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

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“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.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

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