Man needs music, literature, and painting - all those oases of perfection that make up art - to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.

A painted landscape is always more beautiful than a real one, because there's more there. Everything is more sensual, and one takes refuge in its beauty. And man needs spiritual expression and nourishing. It's why even in the prehistoric era, people would scrawl pictures of bison on the walls of caves. Man needs music, literature, and painting-all those oases of perfection that make up art-to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.

In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.

An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it.

Art is a spiritual, immaterial respite from the hardships of life.

I'm a tireless worker; I don't consider painting a work, it is not an obligation, I do it for pleasure; I haven't found anything that amuses me more than painting.

Sculptures permit me to create real volume One can touch the forms, one can give them smoothness, the sensuality that one wants.