Wassily Kandinsky Quotes

The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions of every part of the work.

Efforts to revive the art principles of the past at best produce works of art that resemble a stillborn child.

How can German music not be represented by an article?

Painting took on a fabulous strength and splendor; the object was discredited as an indispensable element of the picture.

What would it take to make you intervene

The force that propels the human spirit on the clear way forward and upward is the abstract spirit.

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

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.

In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration.

Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.

Color transmits and translates emotion.

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.

In place of an intensive cooperation among artists, there is a battle for goods. Hatred, partisanship, cliques, jealousy, and intrigues are the natural consequences of an aimless, materialist art.

There is no must in art because art is free.

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.

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.

Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of joy, grief, or passion. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious.

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.

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 ...

Color cannot stand alone.

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.

I value those artists who embody the expression of their life.

In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.

To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.

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 ...

Music is the ultimate teacher.

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.

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

Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.

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.

Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality.

The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural ... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.

The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.

Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended.

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.

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

A world of colors on the palette remaining ... wandering ... on canvases still emerging.

Emotion that I experienced on first seeing the fresh paint come out of the tube ... the impression of colours strewn over the palette: of colours - alive, waiting, as yet unseen and hidden in their little tubes ...

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.

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.

The eyes are hammers.

Form itself, even if completely abstract ... has its own inner sound.

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.

The organic laws of construction tangled me in my desires, and only with great pain, effort, and struggle did I break through these 'walls around art.

Doubts must be resolved alone within the soul. Otherwise one would profane one's own powerful solution.

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

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

The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne.

Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.

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

Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul.

I let myself go. I thought little of the houses and trees, but applied colour stripes and spots to the canvas ... 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.

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.

The artist must be blind to "recognized" and "unrecognized" form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.

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

(...) an inner feeling called "Stimmung" by the germans and best translated as sentiment (it is to be regreted that this word, sentiment, which is meant to describe the poetical efforts of an artist living soul, has been misused and finally, ridiculed. Was there ever a great word that the masses did not try immediatly to cheapen and desecrate?) (...)