Paul Klee (1879 – 1940)
Swiss painter of German nationality.
When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.
The evening is deep inside me forever. Many a blond, northern moonrise, like a muted reflection, will softly remind me and remind me again and again. It will be my bride, my alter ego. An incentive to find myself. I myself am the moonrise of the south.
Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise, i.e., cannot do something else.
The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.
It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance produces pictorial associations.
I cannot be understood at all on this earth. For I live as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough.
Colour possesses me. It will always possess me. That is the meaning of this happy hour: colour and I are one. I am a painter.
It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.
Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar. Denn ich wohne grad so gut bei den Toten, wie bei den Ungeborenen. Etwas näher dem Herzen der Schöpfung als üblich. Und noch lange nicht nahe genug.
Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured.
We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole ... But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X.
Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.
The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.
Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision.
These are primitive beginnings in art, such as one usually finds in ethnographic collections or at home in one's nursery. Do not laugh, reader! Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved from corruption at an early age. Parallel phenomena are provided by the works of the mentally diseased; neither childish behaviour nor madness are insulting words here, as they commonly are. All this is to be taken very seriously, more seriously than all the public galleries, when it comes to reforming today's art.
The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles).
The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment.