Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in a closet, where we were sure to find shirts.

He who loves goes to the thing loved as the senses go to the sensible thing.

The work must come of itself. All the voluntarist impulses are absolutely useless and all the experience accumulated in fifty years is useless if the work does not «come».

Honour is not in titles or ribbons. It is in the acts and in the motives of the acts. Gustave Courbet

If knowing how to draw is not essential for a grocer, for an artist it is a must! Erik Dietman

It was a great consternation when I shaved my mustache. I got people to use their eyes again. They did not want to look; they had an image of me and they were content with it. 

I don't take photographs any more, I prefer to draw, it goes further... Photography is an immediate action, drawing a meditation. Henri Cartier-Bresson

If a painter makes a portrait, he makes above all the portrait of painting; he is concerned, not with the portrait, but with pictorial culture... Kazimir Malevich

The worst thing in the world is to judge. What I always try to do is eliminate the gap between thinking and doing. Philip Guston

The worst thing in the world is to judge. What I always try to do is eliminate the gap between thinking and doing. Philip Guston

Everything is imponderable in the regions where the artist ventures, but there reigns an order more true than that of the controller of weights and measures.

I forgot a lot of unnecessary things. I learned some essential things. Maybe I learned to look inside myself. Roger Bissière

The eye don't have all the rights; it must leave the part to the intuition and the intelligence, making itself alternately a boost. Geer Van Velde

I want to be a violin string that smells the master's melody and breaks. Amedeo Modigliani

I imagined the paint bleeding. Hurt the way people can be hurt. For me painting became a person with feelings and sensations. Niki de Saint Phalle

To be sensitive is to be conscious, the opposite of what we want to attribute to sensitivity. Le Corbusier

Art always conceals evocations of the mortal condition. Mark Rothko

I painted monochrome surfaces to see with my eyes to see, what the absolute had visible. Yves Klein

Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible. Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible. Paul Klee

The one who has no taste for the absolute settles for quiet mediocrity. Paul Cézanne

The great adventure is to see something unknown appear, every day, in the same face. Alberto Giacometti

There is no chance, there are only meetings. Paul Eluard

The artist is a creator, he decides, he returns the better man, looks after the garden of the intentions, orders. Jean Arp

Do not be afraid of perfection, you will never reach it. Salvador Dali

To be an artist it invents every day: it is a lifestyle. You should not be original, but unique. Zao Wou Ki

I like being the right person in the wrong place and the wrong person in the right place. Andy Warhol

More the criticism is hostile, more the artist should be encouraged. Marcel Duchamp

The drawing is not the shape, it is the way of seeing the shape. Edgar Degas

If you can say it with words, there is no reason for painting it. Edward Hopper

We are always influenced. Follower, we imitate, innovator, we still imitate by modifying. Roger de la Fresnaye

It is what I find who tells me for what I look. Pierre Soulages

I consider that the work is a sufficientt enjoyment in itselfnot to wish for the approval or for the praise. Emile Bernard

I imagine rather clearly the role of a painting in the decoration of the modern house. Maurice Denis

For me painting is just happening like an accident. I can conceive it but I almost never reach out what I had planned. Francis Bacon

I am lost if I spend more than a quarter of an hour by letting me guide by what I see. Claude Monet

We cannot paint eternally women who knit and men who read. Edvard Munch.

It is necessary to be nomadic, to cross the ideas as we cross cities and streets. Francis Picabia

The art is insane and - as everything - not meaningless. Jean Tinguely

When one will say it is too quickly done, you can answer back that they saw too hastily. Van Gogh

When my painting becomes good, I always feel that a big part is fate, and then I feel a dizziness or a chance. Nicolas de Staël

What matters to me, is not to how many people a painting appeals, but to whom.

Beautiful is what proceeds of an internal necessity of the soul. Is beautiful what is beautiful inside.

I have never looked for beauty. But when we make decent things like they have to be, then beauty can happen.

We cannot refrain from aging, but we can refrain from becoming old. Henri Matisse

There is no proof that the flea, which lives on the mouse, is afraid of the cat.

If I think, I never got anything, otherwise I would have stopped.

« From the moment you cheat out of consideration for the beauty, you know that you are an artist. » David Hockney

« To better know how to love, you must first hate the enemy with even greater force. » Antoni Tapiès

« All that I desire is to be enriched by intensely exiciting new thoughts. » René Magritte

Smile because your teeth are not just made ​​for eating or biting.

You should not ask to the artist more that he cannot give, nor to the critic more that he cannot see. Georges Braque

There are few precursors, there are many latecomers. Jean Cocteau

   If the feathers make the plumage, it is not the glue that makes the collage. Max Ernst

If several people dream together, it is the beginning of a reality!

"The weight of the Earth does not prevent birds from flying."

"Certain painters transform the sun into a yellow point, others transform a yellow point into sun."

"There are more things in the ground of a painting than in the sky of the esthetic theory."

"I will never be a serious rival for anyone. I have other fish to fry."