Paul Klee Quotes

84 quotes in 1011 categories

• I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the…
• I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.
• Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few.
• 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…
• 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…
• Every artist would like to live in the central organ of creation... Not all are destined to get there... but our beating hearts drive us…
• 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…
• Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a…
• The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.
• Genius is the error in the system.
• Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal.
• What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many.
• Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.
• In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments…
• It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing; becoming is more important than being...
• In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.
• The beholder's eye, which moves like an animal grazing, follows paths prepared for it in the picture.
• By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.
• Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead…
• 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…

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