If you follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic in any real degree in your art... We must free ourselves from our attachment to the external, for only then do we transcend the tragic, and are enabled consciously to contemplate the repose which is within all things.

If you follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic in any real degree in your art... We must free ourselves from our attachment to the external, for only then do we transcend the tragic, and are enabled consciously to contemplate the repose which is within all things.

I hate everything approaching temperamental inspiration,'sacred fire'and all those attributes of genius which serve only as cloaks for untidy minds.

This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour.

The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.

To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.

All painting - the painting of the past as well as of the present - shows us that its essential plastic means were only line and color.