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I painted these 'Variations' for some years and then I found it necessary to find form for the face, because I had come to understand that great art can only be painted with religious feeling. And that, I could only bring to the human face. I understood that the artist must express through his art, in forms and colours, the divine in him. Therefore a work of art is God made visible and art is ‘a longing for God’.
--
artist quotations from a letter to the Fauvist Dutch painter, father Willibrord Verkade, 12 june 1938; as quoted in ’Alexej von Jawlensky’, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 150

 

Alexej von Jawlensky

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She painted what she painted because she had to, because she was passionate about it. She didn't care at all if people bought her paintings. As she said, she painted her reality.
I find that I make as an artist the kind of choices that I have to be impassioned about. I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself. That's a difference.
Frida painted her own reality, her life. I'm a director and I paint many other people... Other people's realities. But I do have to invest in it.

 

Julie Taymor

 

In the spring of 1911... ...For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours and not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue, and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. 'Der Buckel', 'Violetter Turban', 'Selbstporträt'... ...were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914, just before the war, that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the pre-war works.

 

Alexej von Jawlensky

 

I sat in my studio and painted, and did not need Nature as a prompter (after 1921, when he painted the series ‘Abstrakter Kopf’ –abstract Head, fh). I only had to immerse myself in myself, pray, and prepare my soul to a state of religious awareness. I painted many, many ‘Faces’.

 

Alexej von Jawlensky

 

This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw ‘Pinky’ painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and ‘The Blue Boy” painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

 

Robert Rauschenberg

 

I think the main thing is that I very rarely recognise the actual interview in print. To me, it's like being painted by an artist. And then you see the picture, and they've painted someone else.

 

Morrissey