Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart.

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars.

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.

My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was 50...I had the strength for new deeds and ideas.

Youth must go ahead and prosper. These young painters are all very talented people, but they all paint frescoes.

But can they great works get rid of the worm that lies gnawing at the roots of my heart? No, never.

The camera will never compete with the brush and the palette, until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell.

Any number of holier-than-thou honorable realists walk around in the belief that they have accomplished something, simply because they tell you for the hundredth time that a field is green and a red-painted house is painted red.

Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

Through my art I have tried to explain my life and its meaning. I have also intended to help others to clarify their lives.

What is art? Art grows from joy and sorrow, but mostly from sorrow. It grows from human lives.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.

Colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.