Sunflowers or La Musique?

Room 21 have been asked to compare and contrast two very different artists: Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Matisse, They have two very different styles of art. Van Gogh for instance, His painting style is called Expressionism. But on the other hand Henri Matisse has a whole different style which is called Fauvism. Le Fauves means 'Wild Beast' in french. Si I'm going to be talking about these two wacky and weird artists.

Vincent Van Gogh has an interesting way of painting. His brush strokes are little but bold. As I said his painting style is Expressionism which means that the colours that he used represents how he felt at the time. Most of his paintings are dull because he had a depressing life. The painting we are going to be focusing on is his famous painting named 'Sunflowers'. The colours mostly used are bright colours, like yellow and orange. Some colours are dark like brown and black. The most dominant colour is probably yellow. The significant thing about his paintings is that his brush strokes made his paintings look like they are moving in a way.

Henri Matisse painted a painting called 'La Musique'. In this painting he has used a lot of vibrant colours. Why did he use a lot of vibrant colours? Well because he believed that colours had healing powers. Once he even put colourful paintings around an ill friend, so his friend could get well from their healing glow, and guess what?  He [The friend] actually got better. His colours actually made each other stand out. This is because he used contrasting colours.

The similarities between these two artists are slim but significant. To me, the things that they have in common are that both have plants in their paintings. Also in both paintings the most dominant colours are yet again, yellow, orange and a bit of red. They are also know around the world.

Their differences are very inevitable. Van Gogh used dull colours, Matisse used bright colours. Van Gogh had a depressing life, Matisse had a fairly good life. Van Gogh died at a young age, Matisse at an old colours. But even though these two artists are VERY different they both have one thing in common: they produced some of the most beautiful but expensive paintings in the world.