Fauvism in 4 Minutes: The Wild Beasts of Art 👹

[Music] what does it look like when the color takes over the canvas something like this or this or maybe even something wilder like this this early 20th century movement started in 1905 in france and lasted for just a couple of years it was short-lived but had a huge impact on the art of the 20th century it's called fovism and today we'll find out why this modern art movement is so special [Music] if you'd like to see more art episodes be sure to give us a like and tell us which topics you want to learn about

next fovism got its unusual name when the art critic louis vosel described these artists as lefouv meaning wild beasts the art critics saw their works in an exhibition placed next to classical marble sculptures and called the scene donatello among the wild beasts and despite the fact that it wasn't a compliment he was giving them the labels stuck and today we know these artists as fovists the best-known fovest art was created by three amazing artists henry matisse andrei durham and maurice de vlaming so farvest showed a firework of colors in their works and they painted landscapes

and cityscapes but they also created portraits and when we look at those bold vibrant colors that they used in their works we see different colors than what we would see in real life when looking at those places and those objects that they painted [Music] fovist stitched the realistic values and showed the colours they wanted to show and not the ones you see in nature colour no longer had a representational purpose the ways in which fovists used colour were inspired by the art of magnificent post-impressionists and neo-impressionists like van gogh googo and sora now let's take

a look at some of the amazing fovist artworks henri matisse's joy of life is one of the best-known fovist works this large canvas was finished in 1906. we can see that matisse used a variety of intense vivid colors to show an arcadian landscape the sea is painted in the background nude bathers are lying around there are people dancing and playing music we really are looking at a scene of pure joy in the central background we can notice a circle of people that look a lot like the ones matisse painted in his 1909 masterpiece the dance

another great fovist artwork is called charing cross bridge and it was painted by andre durang just a few years before duran the famous impressionist claude monet painted the same bridge by comparing the works of these two artists we can clearly notice the new tendencies that fovism brought to art in duran's work the parliament of london is painted green the river thames is shown yellow and blue the sky is pink and the shapes seem almost abstract while monet painted the scene in a typical impressionist way by focusing on the effects of light compared to monets duran's

london certainly seems less gray and less moody let's take a look at a fovist portrait maurice de flamenck painted his fellow fove andrei duran we can see that this portrait doesn't look realistic at all we see a close-up of duran's face painted in red with hints of yellow and green his head is outlined with bold black brush strokes duran didn't really look like this but what we are presented with here is the artist's vision of his sitter [Music] phovists represent a very important chapter in the history of modern art they paved the way towards abstract

art but the ways in which they use non-naturalistic colours also influenced german expressionists heavily they created many fascinating colourful paintings that are often a pleasure to look at especially on a grey rainy day hey muses so what do you think about fovesm who's your favorite fovus and what kind of effect do fovis paintings have on you let us know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe to our channel and podcast for more great content like this one finally find us on instagram for your daily dose of culture from curious news [Music] you