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.

A painting without something disturbing in it – what's that?.

The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared.

Art disturbs, science reassures.

Art is a wound turned into light.

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.

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