What is natural does not have to be a representation of something. I'm now working on a thing that is a reconstruction of a starry sky, and yet I'm making it without a given from nature. Someone who says he uses a theme from nature can be right, but also someone who says he uses nothing at all.

The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore, the object must be eliminated from the picture.

Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. The more determinately (consciously) this recognition is experienced, the more intense our happiness. The more determinately (consciously) this union with the universal is felt, the more individual subjectivity declines.

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

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

The essence of painting has actually always been to make it [the universal] plastically perceptible through colour and line.

The relation of color and the relation of proportion are both based on the relation of position.