LES FAUVES

Les Fauves(Fauvism) is a style that began in early 20th century.Les Fauves means in French : "wild beasts". Famous art critic Louis Vauxcelles gave this name when he was visiting an Fauvist exhibition.  They did not last long but it brought a new point of view to the modern art. The leading artists involved were Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck, Braque and Dufy. 
According to the legendary story of Fauvism, some venturesome young men shocked Parisian art world in 1905 by exhibiting paintings such unprecedented, birilliant color that they were condemned as wild beasts. The young Fauves, however continued their couragesous attack on the art that had gone before-formless, delicately tinted Impressionism, and the literary, oversophisticated work of the Nabis. When the great art of Cezanne, however was revealed to them at a retrospective in October 1907, they recognized that their youthful exuberance had led them astray. They soon returned ,to a naturalistic palette and more carefully structured compositions.
 Self-portrait in studio-André Derain


Fauvism was characterised by paintings that used intensely vivid, non-naturalistic and exuberant colours. The style was essentially expressionist, and generally featured landscapes in which forms were distorted. The Fauves first exhibited together in 1905 in Paris. 
  Portrait of Madame Matisse-Henri Matisse


*http://www.artmovements.co.uk/fauvism.htm
*T.Clement Russell, Les Fauves a Sourcebook,1994, Greenwood Press