I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.

Emotion should not be rendered by an excited trembling; it can neither be added on nor be imitated. It is the seed, the work is the flower.

Thanks to the oval I have discovered the meaning of the horizontal and the vertical.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

I do not believe in things. I believe in relationships.

In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.