Henri Matisse and the Fauves


	Paul Gauguin, Parau na te Varua ino (Words of the Devil), 1892, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman 1972.9.12

A retrospective of Paul Gauguin's painting had appeared at the 1903 Salon d'automne, and while Matisse and Derain were working in Collioure, they were also able to see some of Gauguin's last works in a town nearby. Gauguin used color expressively and symbolically to communicate interior states rather than surface appearances. Ordering and simplifying sensory data to its fundamentals, he urged other painters, "don't copy nature too literally." Massing colors into large, flat areas, Gauguin used their inherent emotive qualities to express intangibles.