What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure.
Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.
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...
Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they wanted to safeguard their freedom.
Put a colour upon a canvas – it not only colours with that colour the part of the canvas to which the colour has been applied, but it also colours the surrounding space with the complementary.
It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life.
The residuum of another’s expression can never be related to one’s own feeling.
Never ruin a good painting with the truth.
With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.
From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.
The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it.
Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.
The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.
The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness.
I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.
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...
A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing.
When you’re out of willpower, you can call on stubbornness.
I am made of all that I have seen.
Siempre hay flores para aquellos que desean verlas.
This is why journeys are useful, they enlarge the space that is around us.