Wassily Kandinsky Quotations

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

With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound.

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

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

An empty canvas is a living wonder — far lovelier than certain pictures.

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 sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble...

There is no must in art because art is free.

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.

Color is a power which directly influences the soul.

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.

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.

To create a work of art is to create the world.

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.

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated.

How can German music not be represented by an article?

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

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

The sensations of colors on the palette can be spiritual experiences.

Whether the psychological effect of color is direct...or whether it is the outcome of association, is open to question. The soul being one with the body, it may well be possible that a psychological tremor generates corresponding one through association.

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.

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

When I was thirteen or fourteen I bought a paintbox with oil paints from money slowly saved up. The feeling I had at the time - or better - the experience of color coming slowly out of the tube - is with me to this day.

The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.

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.

Today is the great day of one of the revelations of this world. The interrelationships of these individual realms were illumined as by a flash of lightning; they burst unexpected, frightening, and joyous out of the darkness. Never were they so strongly tied together and never so sharply divided...

Colors produce a spiritual vibration, the impression they create is important only as a step towards this vibration.

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.

Objects damage pictures.

It should not be forgotten that art is not a science where the latest 'correct' theory declares the old to be false and erases it.

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

In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings.

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.

There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.

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.

Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul.

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

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation.

Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.

A parallel between color and music can only be relative – just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.

Every phenomenon can be experienced in two ways. These two ways are not arbitrary, but are bound up with the phenomenon – developing out of its nature and characteristics : Externally – or – inwardly.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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...

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

Art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.

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.

Color transmits and translates emotion.

Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.

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

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.

An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance – almost dull, in fact – in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged.

The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area.

The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.

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.

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

… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

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

Color is a means to exert a direct influence on the soul.

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.

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.

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

Barriers are continually being made out of... new values which have overturned the barriers of the past. Thus one sees that it is not basically the new value that is of prime importance, but rather the spirit that is revealed in this value, as well as the freedom necessary for this revelation...

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.

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

In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key.

Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.

In the hierarchy of colors, green represents the social middle class, self-satisfied, immovable, narrow...

The eyes are hammers.

The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental.

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

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

Color cannot stand alone.

Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame.

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.

The artist is not a 'Sunday child' for whom everything immediately succeeds. He does not have the right to live without duty. The task that is assigned to him is painful, it is a heavy cross for him to bear.

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...

Each color lives by its mysterious life.

Everything shows me its face, its innermost being, its secret soul, which is more often silent than heard.

Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.

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...

The joy of life consists in the inevitable, continual triumph of new values.

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.

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

Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.

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.

Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world.

Empty canvas. In appearance - really empty, silent, indifferent. Stunned, almost. In effect - full of tensions, with thousand subdued voices, heavy with expectations. A little frightened because it may be violated

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.

Everything starts from a dot.

The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects.

The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.