Woman by the Ocean (c. 1919) by Henri Matisse | Poster

“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.”

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

“One must be absolutely modern.”

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

“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.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

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

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

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

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

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

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

“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.”