Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.
The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness.
When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would. But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.
It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.
...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.
If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.
Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.
The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.
Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods.
A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.
I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.
What matters most to me? To work with my model until I have it enough in me to be able to improvise, to let my hand run free.
Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.
A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.
I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.
I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.
For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.
The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.
The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.
I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been no more than a medium as it were.
My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model.
My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.
A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.
The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.
I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.
A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter.
There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair.
It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.
From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.
An artist is an explorer. He has to begin by self-discovery and by observation of his own procedure. After that he must not feel under any constraint.
Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.
A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.
Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive.
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.
From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.
Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances.
In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope.
I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.
It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.
When I started to paint I felt transported into a kind of paradise... In everyday life I was usually bored and vexed... Starting to paint I felt gloriously free.
You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.
We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.
An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.
Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.
I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.
Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole.
The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.