Wassily Kandinsky Quotes

Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.

Each color lives by its mysterious life.

Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his heart is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will someday reach to heaven.

Art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.

Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.

Color is a means to exert a direct influence on the soul.

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.

Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.

Objects damage pictures.

With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound.

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated.

Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.

All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.

A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art.

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.

Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.

Music is the ultimate teacher.

An empty canvas is a living wonder - far lovelier than certain pictures.

The artist must be blind to distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.

Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame.

Every phenomenon can be experienced in two ways. These two ways are not arbitrary, but are bound up with the phenomenon – developing out of its nature and characteristics : Externally – or – inwardly.

The sensations of colors on the palette can be spiritual experiences.

Color transmits and translates emotion.

The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.

In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key.

Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.

Colors produce a spiritual vibration, the impression they create is important only as a step towards this vibration.

The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.

As a picture painted in yellow always radiates spiritual warmth, or as one in blue has apparently a cooling effect, so green is only boring.

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

To create a work of art is to create the world.

There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression.

An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance – almost dull, in fact – in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged.

… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental.

Drawing instruction is a training towards perception, exact observation and exact presentation not of the outward appearances of an object, but of its constructive elements, its lawful forces-tensions, which can be discovered in given objects and of the logical structures of same-education toward clear observation and clear rendering of the contexts, whereby surface phenomena are an introductory step towards the three-dimensional.

Empty canvas. In appearance - really empty, silent, indifferent. Stunned, almost. In effect - full of tensions, with thousand subdued voices, heavy with expectations. A little frightened because it may be violated

That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.

The artist is not a 'Sunday child' for whom everything immediately succeeds. He does not have the right to live without duty. The task that is assigned to him is painful, it is a heavy cross for him to bear.

Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul.

The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.

Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.

Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works.

There is no must in art because art is free.

The world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit.

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation.

The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.