an avant-garde movement in French painting of the early 20th century. The ironic epithet les fauves (“the wild beasts”) was given by critics to a group of painters including H. Matisse, P.-A. Marquet, G. Rouault, M. de Vlaminck, A. Derain, R. Dufy, G. Braque, and K. van Dongen, who exhibited their works at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1905.
In contrast to German expressionism, fauvism had neither a consciously adopted program nor a moral or philosophical orientation, but rather represented a purely aesthetic protest against 19th-century artistic traditions and an affirmation of an independent new outlook on painting. The fauves, who painted in various styles, were united for a short period, from 1905 to 1907, by their attraction to terse graphic forms, intense color contrasts, pronounced compositional rhythms, and a decorative and laconic technique, as well as a search for new inspiration in primitive, medieval, and Oriental art.