Paul Klee Quotes

First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.

We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing.

A line is a dot that went for a walk.

Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment

Make chance essential.

All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.

The artist of today is more than an improved camera, he is more complex, richer, and wider. He is a creature on the earth and a creature within the whole, that is, a creature on a star among stars.

I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive.

To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke.

Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour.

Art does not reproduce what is visible, it makes things visible.

My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me.

Nothing can be rushed. It must grow, it should grow of itself, and if the time ever comes for that work, then so much the better!

He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.

Each energy calls for its complementary energy to achieve self-contained stability based on the play of energies.

The creation of a work of art must of necessity, as a result of entering into the specific dimensions of pictorial art, be accompanied by distortion of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn.

The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.

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.

The work of art is above all a process of creation.

Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.

In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways.

In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible ... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.

Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind.

Art does not reflect what is seen, rather it makes the hidden visible.

The pictorial work was born of movement, is itself recorded movement, and is assimilated through movement (eye muscles).

See with one eye, feel with the other.

It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

Genius is the error in the system.

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.

You adapt yourself to the contents of the paintbox.

After all, it's rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks.

Art doesn't reflect what we see; it makes us see.

All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!

Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age.

There is no substitute for intuition.

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.

A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.

One eye sees, the other feels.

When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk.

I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.

Spatial art does not begin with a poetic mood or idea, but with construction of one or more figures, with the harmonizing of several colors and tones, or with the devaluation of spatial relationships and so on.

I paint in order not to cry.

The creation lives as genesis beneath the visible surface of the work. All intelligent people see this after the fact, but only the creative see it before the fact - in the future.

I imagined face and genitals to be the corresponding poles of the female sex, when girls wept I thought of pudenda weeping in unison.

An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk's sake.

Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.

Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of all time and space call it brain or heart of creation activates every function, who is the artist who would not dwell there?

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few.

A long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color.

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.

To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.

The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.

I cannot be grasped in the here and now,
For my dwelling place is much among the dead,
As the yet unborn,
Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual,
But still not close enough.

For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind

My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.

By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.

Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view.

Colour and I are one.

One day I will lie nowhere
with an angel at my side.

Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.

Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.