The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

A certain blue enters your soul. A certain red has an effect on your blood-pressure.

It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.

The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child.

Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.

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.

I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.