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..

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 ….

Everything that we see in our daily lives is more or less distorted by acquired habits and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cine….

Never ruin a good painting with the truth..

All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of t….

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation..

Art is an escape from reality..

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doe….

Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. Wi….

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 lig….

When you're out of will power you call on stubbornness, that's the trick..

If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture t….

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art..

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, whil….

The splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting up of form and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of the….

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit..

The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for hi….

There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair..

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject..

Exactitude is not truth..

All my efforts go into creating an art that can be understood by everyone..