What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure.

I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.

Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, an historical necessity, beyond choice.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.