Wassily Kandinsky Best Quotes & Sayings

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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