The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.

We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.

When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.

I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.

A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.

The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.