Which school of art did Henri Matisse belong to?

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse ( 1869 – 1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship.

He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

Matisse was one of the founders of Fauvism. In 1905 together with André Derain (French, 1880-1954), they created pictures that inspired the witty critic Louis Vauxcelles to call them fauves ("wild beasts") in his review for the magazine Gil Blas. This term was later applied to the artists themselves.

Fauvism was the first of the avant-garde movements that flourished in France in the early years of the twentieth century. The Fauve painters were the first to break with Impressionism (leading artist: Claude Monet) as well as with older, traditional methods of perception. Their spontaneous, often subjective response to nature was expressed in bold, undisguised brushstrokes and high-keyed, vibrant colors directly from the tube.