Wisdom from the world's greatest painters — famous artist quotes on colour, light, creativity and the daily practice of painting. A little inspiration for your next session at the easel.
500 quotes
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.”
“Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect.”
“Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.”
“Fa vini potenti e assai, … e ‘l vino vale el più uno soldo il boccale e la libbra della vitella un soldo e ‘l sale 10 dinari, e ‘l simile il burro, ed è la loro libbra 30 once, e l’ova un soldo la soldata. (Modern Italian)”
“Subito salse in me due cose: paura e desiderio: paura per la minacciante e scura spelonca, desiderio per vedere se là entro fusse alcuna miracolosa cosa. (Ancient Italian)”
“truovasi di miglio i(n) miglio bone osteriee. (Ancient Italian)”
“3 miglia più in là si trova li edifici della vena del rame e dello argento, presso una terra detta Pra Santo Petro e vene di ferro e cose fantastiche. (Ancient Italian)”
“Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.”
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
“Tristo é lo discepolo che non avanza il suo maestro.<!--Codex Forster III, 66 v-->”
“Tristo è quel discepolo che non avanza il suo maestro. (Modern Italian)”
“Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.”
“Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.”
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”
“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”
“Necessity is the mistress and guardian of Nature.”
“Human subtlety...will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.”
“I like paintings that fight with themselves.”
“Colour is where a painting's real decisions get made.”
“I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.”
“The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”
“I would wish my pictures to look of the flesh, not of the eye.”
“As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.”
“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”
“Great art picks up where nature ends.”
“Colour is all. When colour is right, form is right.”
“People talk of Pablo Picasso as the leader of the Cubists but, strictly speaking, he is no longer a Cubist. Today he is a Cubist, tomorrow he will be something else. The only true Cubists are Gleizes and Metzinger.”
“To be looked at [from the other side of his art-work 'The Glass'] with one eye, close to, for almost an hour.”
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