I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting..

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty re….

I did not always trust my teachers, because I found them too weak. I was looking for something that could take me in a new direction, for things that….

In the beginning, the energy involved to create came from my reaction to the work of other artists. The force behind this was aggression. The art tha….

I have always had the feeling that other people are too stupid to discover interesting things. That's why I do it myself. I think of collecting as a ….

The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ….

I don't paint over my paintings with black paint. I paint black paintings. It isn't because I'm sad, just as I didn't paint red paintings yesterday b….

All German painters have a neurosis with Germany's past: war, the postwar period most of all, East Germany. I addressed all of this in a deep depress….

I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do...something that references tradition, ….

I remember that Michael Werner told me about a famous collector, and Michael set up an appointment for us to meet. This man looked around the room an….

You cannot deny your origins: I love Kirchner more than Matisse, although Matisse was a greater artist. That isn't to do with nationality. It's a str….

I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised….

An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object..

What I could never escape was Germany, and being German..

Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker..

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms..

You dig in and you find something..

I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface..

Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption..

I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived... and the picture that fight….

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does..