Quote collection
417 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"What is drawing? How does one get there? It's working one's way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? - since hammering on it doesn't help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently."
"Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously does not allow that resistance to put him off his stride; on the contrary, it is that much more of a stimulus to fight for victory."
"The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental."
"Painting demands an intelligent model."
"And in a picture I want to say something comforting, as music is comforting."
"The great isn't something accidental; it must be willed."
"There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience."
"It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work."
"That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter."
"For me work is an absolute necessity, indeed I can't really drag it out, I take no more pleasure in anything than in work, that's to say, pleasure in other things stops immediately and I become melancholy if I can't get on with the work."
"Don't lose heart if it's very difficult at times, everything will come out all right and nobody can in the beginning do as he wishes."
"It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth."
"What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came."
"By working hard, old man, I hope to make something good one day. I haven't yet, but I am pursuing it and fighting for it . . . ."
"It is the painting that makes me so happy these days."
"The more ugly, older, more cantankerous, more ill and poorer I become, the more I try to make amends by making my colours more vibrant, more balanced and beaming."
"What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting."
"There certainly is an affinity between a person and his work, but it is not easy to define what this affinity is, and on that question many judge quite wrongly."
"Life is not long for anybody, and the problem is only to make something of it."
"A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed."