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.
What I am after, above all, is expression.
Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.
Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.
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.
I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.
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...
A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful.
After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.
Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?
You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.
What I dream of is an art of balance.
I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.
To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought.
I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.
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.
A certain color tones you up. It’s the concentration of timbres.
Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.
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.
The truly original artist invents his own signs.