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Why did Louis Vauxcelles call Henri Matisse and other painters fauves?
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Henri Matisse
French artist Henri Matisse, photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn, 1913.
The French art critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term fauves—meaning "wild beasts"—in response to the works exhibited by Henri Matisse and his colleagues at the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris.12
Vauxcelles was struck by the group's aggressive, unconventional approach to painting, which featured:
- Intense Color: Artists used pure, brilliant colors applied directly from the paint tubes, often in non-naturalistic ways to create an explosive effect on the canvas.123
- Expressive Technique: The paintings utilized crude, forceful, and blatant brushstrokes that often left areas of the canvas raw and exposed.13
- Rejection of Tradition: The artists abandoned traditional renderings of three-dimensional space in favor of a new, emotionally charged style.13
Vauxcelles famously verbalized his shock upon seeing a more traditional statue surrounded by these vibrant, agitated works, exclaiming, "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild animals!"). This reaction to the painters' "violence" of form and color ultimately gave the movement its name: Fauvism.41