Kandinsky Art Quotes & Sayings

To create a work of art is to create the world. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

All day long I add up columns of figures and make everything balanced. I come home. I sit down. I look at a Kandinsky and it's wonderful. — Solomon R. Guggenheim

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

He knew Kandinsky by heart: every trickle of red, slash of black ink, and hemorrhage of gold. Each dissonant note in its allegro, the harmony in its adagio, and its deep blue intermezzo, formed a symphony he had memorized in his body. He couldn't say if Fragment 2 symbolized the Deluge, the Last Judgment, or the Resurrection. But it had become his religion, offering both redemption and pain.. — Kelly Oliver

Somebody can paint with a fine brush like Monet and do millions of little dots or somebody can splatter it up there like Kandinsky or Jackson Pollock and go "Yep, that's art." That's okay. — Patrick Wilson

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

There is no must in art because art is free. — Wassily Kandinsky

Art becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work.
Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

The artist must be blind to "recognized" and "unrecognized" form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

My eyes roved over the walls covered with my collages and prints of famous paintings. Magritte, Kandinsky, Kahlo. My origami shapes hung from fishing wire, dangling over my bed. They shivered in the slight breeze blowing through my open window. It was my own little escape pod, but none of it was enough tonight. — Heather Demetrios

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

The onlooker turns from the artist who has higher ideals and who cannot see his life purpose in an art without aims. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassilly Kandinsky

There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis. — Hans Haacke

Malevich, Lissitsky, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Pevsner, Rodchenko ... all believed in the social role of art ... Their works were like hinged doors, connecting activity with activity. Art with engineering; music with painting; poetry with design; fine art with propaganda; photographs with typography; diagrams with action; the studio with the street ... — John Berger

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. — Wassily Kandinsky