Henri Matisse(French, 1869-1954) was one of the most influential French artists of the 20th century. Matisse’s use of unmodulated color, inventive figuration, and decorative patterns helped redefine many of the formal tenets of painting. With Pointillism as a point of departure, Matisse along with Albert Marquet and André Derain, developed a radical method of using pure color to express light, in what became known as Fauvism.