Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer..

A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping….

My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues ….

The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen..

It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance pr….

We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing..

In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible..

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing. Then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive….

A line is a dot that went for a walk..

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical comp….

For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind.

Everything vanishes round me and good works rise from me of their own accord..

Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin..

I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit..

My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will..

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of….

Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of….

Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a human being and want ….

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible..

My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones..

What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many..