Explore Quotes by Wassily Kandinsky

Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.

Color cannot stand alone.

I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas with a palette knife, and I made them sing with all the intensity I could.

Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.

The sensations of colors on the palette can be spiritual experiences.

Colors produce a spiritual vibration, the impression they create is important only as a step towards this vibration.

Everything starts from a dot.

The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.

There is no must in art because art is free.

Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.

That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.

The eyes are hammers.

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.

The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.

Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.

… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

Empty canvas. In appearance - really empty, silent, indifferent. Stunned, almost. In effect - full of tensions, with thousand subdued voices, heavy with expectations. A little frightened because it may be violated

Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame.