Paula Modersohn-Becker Quotes & Sayings

I love color. It must submit to me. And I love art. I kneel before it, and it must become mine. Everything around me glows with passion. Every day reveals a new red flower, glowing, scarlet red. Everyone around me carries them. Some wear them quietly hidden in their hearts. And they are like poppies just opening, of which one can see only here and there a hint of red petal peeking out from the green bud. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

We cleave to the past too much in Germany. All of our German art is too bogged down in the conventional ... I think more highly of a free person who consciously puts convention aside. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

Nature is supposed to become greater to me than people. It ought to speak louder from me. I should feel small in the face of nature's enormity. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

Lack of money rivets us firmly to the ground, one's wings are clipped. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

How happy I would be if I could give figurative expression to the unconscious feeling that often murmurs so softly and sweetly within me. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

The Louvre! The Louvre has me in its clutches. Every time I'm there rich blessings rain down upon me. I am coming to understand Titian more and more and learning to love him. And then there is Botticelli's sweet Madonna, with red roses behind her, standing against a blue-green sky. And Fiesole with his poignant little biblical stories, so simply told, often so glorious in their colors. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

I know I shall not live very long ... If I've painted three good pictures, then I shall leave gladly with flowers in my hand and my hair. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

Worpswede, Worpswede, I cannot get you out of my mind ... Your magnificent pine trees! I call them my men
thick, gnarled, powerful, and tall
yet with the most delicate nerves and fibers in them. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

It is my experience that marriage does not make one happier. It destroys the illusion that has been the essence of one's previous existence, that there existed something like a soul-mate. The feeling of not being understood is heightened in marriage by the fact that one's entire life beforehand had the aim of finding a being who would understand one. But isn't it better to exist without such an illusion and look this great lonely truth straight in the eye? — Paula Modersohn-Becker

I want to give colors intoxication, fullness, excitement, power by trying to forget Impressionism. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

I believe that one should not think too much about nature when painting, at least not during the painting's conception. The colour sketch should be made exactly as one has perceived things in nature. But personal feeling is the main thing. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

I think the time is coming for struggle and uncertainty. It comes into every serious and beautiful life. I knew all along that it had to come. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

I must learn to express the gentle vibration of things: the intrinsically rough texture. I must find this expression in drawings; in the way in which I draw my nudes here in Paris, more original and at the same time sensitively observed. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

In art one is usually totally alone with oneself. — Paula Modersohn-Becker