There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.
If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.
Be sure to give the same expression to a person’s face that you give to his body.
A painting is above all a product of the artist’s imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn’t spoil anything.
I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.
The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting’s expense.
I’ll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!
A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.
I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.
One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one’s recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.
I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself.
People call me the painter of dancers, but I really wish to capture movement itself.
A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy.
Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, ‘I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.’
Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement.
People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.
It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.
The frame is the reward of the artist.
Even in front of nature one must compose.
The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.