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 way to show that I understand what's important better than others do.

I've painted, but I've also done graphics since as long as I can remember. So even people with little to spend could afford it. But even the graphic works are only bought by those who buy the big, expensive paintings. I think that's troublesome.

I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father's generation.

We have seen so many exhibits in recent years where the exhibition design was aesthetically beautiful. In this case, if someone wants to get something out of the exhibit, they must neglect the aesthetics and look at my pictures.

Despite all the taxes people pay, there supposedly isn't any money in this country for art. Of course, this makes an artist ask himself: "Well, then, what are you doing with the 100 million I pay each year? What happened to that money?" And he doesn't get an answer.

That was in 1957. And there I found out that Germany is a kind of province. I didn't know anything about expressionism, about the Bauhaus and Dada and surrealism. I was uneducated, so to speak - and everybody else was more or less uneducated, too.

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 returns.. your thought process goes on.