In Italy the artist is a god. Now if the artist is a god, the scientist is likewise a god.

I went to the Academy and studied with Stuck who was then a big man. But didn't interest me. I didn't know that before me there was Kandinsky and Klee who had also studied with Stuck. He had a good name at that time.

I count all the time on resonance. I call on this, you see.

When I came from horizontal vertical straight all old stuff then suddenly I go also again in curved lines. And there I submit to changes in the intensity of my hand leading a tool, you see.

I think Kandinsky and I were very near friends.

If you don't do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide.

It was my family that wanted me to be a teacher. That was safe, you see. To be a painter was terrible.

My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theatre and all such nonsense, you know.

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

I prefer to see with closed eyes.

Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.

Apprentice is the beginner - the first years you work in a craft in the European sense you are an apprentice. That takes 3 or 4 years. Then you are a journeyman. You can go from one master to another and learn other tricks and other secrets.

On the little money I had collected I lived in Berlin very cheaply, ate very cheaply. And already in 1920 I saved the first salaries I received to go to Munich.

When we are honest - that's my saying - if we are honest then we will reveal ourselves. But we do not have to make an effort to be individualistic, different from others.

Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.

When we were in the seminary we got a stipend direct from the government and for that stipend we had an obligation to stick to our teaching job for five years.

Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.

In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is - as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

I have taught my students not to apply rules or mechanical ways of seeing.

It is not so for art in appreciation because art is concerned with human behavior. And science is concerned with the behavior of metal or energy. It depends on what the fashion is. Now today it's energy. It's the same soul behind it. The same soul, you see.

In Italy the artist is a god. Now if the artist is a god, the scientist is likewise a god.

You see, I have in my teaching - I always say I've done it for a hundred years and have had thousands of students - I have always spoken against just falling onto your knees for so-called accidents, I mean a result you are not responsible for.

I was for years in the yellow period, you know.

As basic rules of a language must be practiced continually, and therefore are never fixed, so exercises toward distinct color effects never are done or over. New and different cases will be discovered time and again.

I love very much to draw animals.

And I started with this: I have not painted at all my childhood. In fact, I never painted. But I helped my father who was a house painter and decorative painter. He made stage sets, he made glass paintings, he made everything.

I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.

I'm not a talker. I'm a formulator.

The aim of our studies is to prove that color is the most relative means of artistic expression, that we never really perceive what color is physically.

I have invented the Thermometer style.

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.

Easy to know that diamonds are precious Good to learn that rubies have depth But more to see that pebbles are miraculous.

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.