Fauvism
フォーヴィスム / 1904–1908 / Style / Avant-garde
A short-lived movement that severed colour from the depiction of its subject, slamming pure hues onto the canvas as flat planes. The brushstroke itself carries the contour, and adjacent complementaries make the surface vibrate. It became the starting point for every later design that uses colour as a device of emotion.
Pure colour straight from the tube / Complementaries set directly side by side / Bare white ground left unpainted / Rough brushstrokes doubling as contours
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Posters and covers where saturated colour carries the whole message · Campaign visuals that need raw, immediate emotional heat
- Type
- Loose, brush-lettered display forms; nothing engineered or geometric
- Composition
- Flat planes of colour locked edge to edge, with bare ground breathing between strokes
- Material
- Unmixed saturated pigment—vermilion, viridian, cobalt—against untouched white
- Caution
- Avoid taming the palette or smoothing the strokes; once the colour stops clashing and vibrating, Fauvism collapses into pleasant decoration.
- Further study
- The 'wild beasts' review at the 1905 Salon d'Automne / The relationship between colour and emotion / The development toward decorative flatness