Kandinsky Wassily 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

Music is the ultimate teacher. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

Everything starts from a dot. — Wassily Kandinsky

The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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 ... — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — 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

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

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 ... — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow. — Wassily Kandinsky

Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — 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

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

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 ... — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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 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

How can German music not be represented by an article? — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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 — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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. — 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

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

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 distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. — 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

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

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

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

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

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 ... — Wassily Kandinsky

The eyes are hammers. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — 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

The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with base notes, or dark lake with the treble. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view. — 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 directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

... 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? — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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

Each color lives by its mysterious life. — Wassily Kandinsky

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 ... — 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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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. — 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

The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle is actually as overwhelming in effect as the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo. — Wassily Kandinsky

Color cannot stand alone. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

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. — Wassily Kandinsky

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

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

I had to find a way to paint abstractly, which is what I wanted to do. I couldn't forget [Wassily] Kandinsky and [Kazimir] Malevich and [Piet] Mondrian, I mean that was the basis. — Frank Stella

Blue is the typical heavenly colour. The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks to almost black, it echos grief that is hardly human. — Wassily Kandinsky

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. — 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

Color transmits and translates emotion. — Wassily Kandinsky

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