Beltracchi Wolfgang Quotes & Sayings

I think that the most important requirement is to capture the essence of a piece of art. You look at it, essentially absorb it, and you have to be able to understand it visually without having to think about how it was done. I was already able to do that as a child. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I only painted when I felt like it and needed money. But it never really became a professional thing, even though the dealers would have liked that. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

There he went again, stealing my breath, except he wasn't stealing it; I gave it to him freely because he owned me. We owned each other. — Adriane Leigh

One is a criminal to some people and an artist to others. I can understand that. In a legal sense, I am a convicted criminal. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes - before I even painted it. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

You can't paint pictures of love. You can only imagine them. So I suppose I don't need a painting by another artist. I have enough of my own. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

For the cynic, art is defined through money. That, of course, is a very sad statement. But an artist is someone who does creative things. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

Sometimes I smoked opium. And I also took LSD - for a while, quite a lot of LSD, in fact. But I never had any bad experiences. I stopped in 1985. I'd had enough, and I don't miss it, either. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I went to the flea market in the morning and charged tourists money to take pictures of me. I looked pretty wild, with hair down to my waist, Indian robes, a floor-length fur coat. There must be lots of photos of me out there. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

Fame never interested me. I could have exhibited more of my own works in the 1970s, but I didn't want to. It's sort of like being a child. When you're finished with school, you have only one thing on your mind: to get out and experience life. Did I want to spend all my time working on a painting? No, I wanted to have fun, travel, meet women and live life. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I never think of the life I'll miss after I'm dead, or all that I missed before I was born. It's the time I'm as good as dead during this, my one and only life, that makes me tear at my hair. It seems to me that if I carefully gathered all of the time I was entirely alive I would have amassed perhaps two years of life so far ... — Scott Spencer

I wouldn't be ashamed to sell my own art for a lot of money. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam for a year. It was intense, and it's possible that I even had a few blackouts. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I once went to a demonstration in Aachen against fare increases on public transport. A police officer pulled out a bunch of my hair, and there were a lot of violent beatings. That's when I thought to myself: You'd better leave it alone. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

No one ever ordered anything from me. I painted because I wanted to. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I never decided to become an art forger. I was aware of my talent at an early age, and I used it foolishly. This developed over the years. In my heart, I don't see myself as a criminal. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

Most forgers are caught because they tell the wrong person about what they do. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

The vessel of Revolution can arrive at port only on a sea reddened by torrents of blood. — Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

I can paint anything. Leonardo? Of course. But why? You couldn't sell it. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

The vampire stared at me, his mouth slack as Ghastek assessed his options. I took a couple of forms from my desk, put them into the vamp's mouth, and pulled them up by their edges.
"What are you doing?" Ghastek asked.
"My hole puncher broke."
"You have no respect for the undead. — Ilona Andrews

The dress means no harm, after all. And it is new. It carries nothing inside it but the possible beginnings of her downfall. — Amanda Hodgkinson

Part of John's meaning of the cross, then, is that it is not only what happens, purely pragmatically, when God's kingdom challenges Caesar's kingdom. It is also what has to happen if God's kingdom, which makes its way (as Jesus insists) by nonviolence rather than by violence, is to win the day. — N. T. Wright

The trick is to paint a picture that doesn't exist, and yet that fits perfectly into an artist's body of work. — Wolfgang Beltracchi