There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
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.
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.
Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.
There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence.
The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.
Colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to preserve, just as in music you try to preserve sounds. It is a question of organization, of finding the arrangement that will keep the beauty and freshness of the colour.
Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.
Derive happiness in oneself from a good day’s work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.
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.
Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.
To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.
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.
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.
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.
Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain.
It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.
Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance.
It has always bothered me that I don’t paint like everyone else.
A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.