Skip to content

Art Quotes by Paul Cezanne

37 Art quotes by Paul Cezanne

All Art quotes Paul Cezanne’s page

Paul Cezanne insists that art must spring from feeling, not just technique. He describes art as a reproduction of what the senses see, filtered through the soul, and he believes that color and drawing are inseparable. He also jokes that a single apple could astonish an entire city.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it.

Image

Chatter about art is almost always useless.

Image

I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting.

Image

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation.

Image

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Image

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

Image

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.

Image

The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality.

Image

There is a logic of colors, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the…

Image

Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist.

Image

There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad…

Image

What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a…

Image

The strong experience of nature... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of…

Image

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for…

Image

I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain.

Image

Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly?

Image

Painting, like any art, comprises a technique, a workmanlike handling of material, but the accuracy of a tone and the fictitious combination…

Image

Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more color harmonizes, the more…

Image

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft,…

Image

To be sure an artist wishes to raise his standard intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain in obscurity.…

Image

Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the…

Image

One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense…

Image

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries…

Image

Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn't it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art…

Image

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. We must not, however, be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas…

Image

May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into…

Image

All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting…

Image

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

Image

You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the…

Image

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower.…

Image

Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think.

Image

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.

Image

My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life.

Image

The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.

Image

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design…

Image

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive…

Image

The artist must scorn all judgment that is not based on an intelligent observation of character. He must beware of the literary…

Image

Other authors on Art

More by Paul Cezanne

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth.

You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest.

A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter.

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals.

You have to hurry up if you want to see something, everything disappears.

Here on the edge of the river, the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for…

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

All the theories mess you up inside.

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them ... one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and…

Painting is founded on the heart controlled by the head.

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature,…