I think you too recognize the important relationship between philosophy and art, and it is just this relationship that most painters deny. The great masters do grasp it, unconsciously; but I believe that a painter's conscious spiritual knowledge will have a much greater influence upon his art, and that it would be due only to a weakness in him, or lack of genius, should this spiritual knowledge be harmful to his art.

Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.

I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects.

The only problem in art is to achieve a balance between the subjective and the objective.

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

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.

Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind?