Henri Matisse is a French artist, known for both his use of color and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. 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.
In 1905, Matisse and his Fauvist friends came on the stage for the first time, which represented the birth of "Fauvism". Matisse was called "King of the beasts". His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.