Fauvism was a bold art movement that emerged in France in the early 1900s, where painters used wildly bright, unexpected colors straight from the paint tube. Instead of painting a tree its natural green or brown, a Fauvist might make it blazing orange or electric purple. Instead of realistic skin tones, they'd paint a portrait with a green face and a pink shadow.

The name Fauvism comes from the French word fauve, meaning “wild beast.” When these paintings were first exhibited in Paris in 1905, an art critic was so shocked by their intense, almost violent colors that he called the artists les fauves (the wild beasts). The painters liked the name and kept it.

Artists like Henri Matisse and André Derain led this movement. They believed color could express emotion more powerfully than realistic shading could. A Fauvist painting of a sunset might use colors that never actually appear in sunsets, but somehow capture the feeling of watching one better than a photograph.

Fauvism only lasted a few years as an official movement, but it changed art forever by proving that painters didn't have to copy exactly what they saw. They could use color as a tool for expressing feelings and ideas.