Wassily Kandinsky
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.Collection: Drawing
Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.Collection: Art
There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.Collection: Spiritual
I let myself go. I thought little of the houses and trees, but applied colour stripes and spots to the canva... Within me sounded the memory of early evening in Moscow, before my eyes was the strong, colour-saturated scale of the Munich light and atmosphere, which thundered deeply in the shadows.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Teaching
I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas with a palette knife, and I made them sing with all the intensity I could.Collection: Color
Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.Collection: Mother
The sensations of colors on the palette can be spiritual experiences.Collection: Spiritual
Everything shows me its face, its innermost being, its secret soul, which is more often silent than heard.Collection: Soul
The world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit.Collection: Spiritual
Music is the ultimate teacher.Collection: Teacher
I really believe that I am the first and only artist to throw not just the 'subject' out of my paintings, but every 'object' as well.Collection: Believe
Colors produce a spiritual vibration, the impression they create is important only as a step towards this vibration.Collection: Spiritual
The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.Collection: Powerful
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.Collection: Sacred
A world of colors on the palette remaining... wandering... on canvases still emerging.Collection: Color
A parallel between color and music can only be relative – just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.Collection: Color
There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression.Collection: Expression
Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul.Collection: Color
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.Collection: Children
It should not be forgotten that art is not a science where the latest 'correct' theory declares the old to be false and erases it.Collection: Art
The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.Collection: People
In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.Collection: Color
Barriers are continually being made out of... new values which have overturned the barriers of the past. Thus one sees that it is not basically the new value that is of prime importance, but rather the spirit that is revealed in this value, as well as the freedom necessary for this revelation.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Two
Whether the psychological effect of color is direct...or whether it is the outcome of association, is open to question. The soul being one with the body, it may well be possible that a psychological tremor generates corresponding one through association.Collection: Color
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.Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Spiritual
In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration.Collection: Inspiration
Objects damage pictures.Collection: Damage
The force that propels the human spirit on the clear way forward and upward is the abstract spirit.Collection: Way Forward
Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Nice
I value those artists who embody the expression of their life.Collection: Artist
The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life.Collection: Spiritual
Only just now awakening after years of materialism, our soul is still infected with the despair born of unbelief, of lack of purpose and aim.Collection: Years
Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.Collection: Color
Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.Collection: Eye
It is essential that the painter should develop not only his eyes, but also his soul, so that it too may be capable of weighing colors in balance.Collection: Eye
In the hierarchy of colors, green represents the social middle class, self-satisfied, immovable, narrow.Collection: Self
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 violatedCollection: Voice
The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions of every part of the work.Collection: Function
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.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Mean
The eyes are hammers.Collection: Eye
The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Stars
The word compositon moved me spiritually and I made it my aim in life to paint a composition. It affected me like a prayer and filled me with awe.Collection: Prayer