41 quotes found
"There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then He must be dug out again."
"And if God does not help me to go on, then I shall have to help God. — The surface of the earth is gradually turning into one great prison camp, and soon there will be nobody left outside. … I don't fool myself about the real state of affairs, and I've even dropped the pretense that I'm out to help others. I shall merely try to help God as best I can, and if I succeed in doing that, then I shall be of use to others as well. But I mustn't have heroic illusions about that either."
"Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise You one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about my tomorrow, although that takes some practice. Each day is sufficient unto itself. I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn't seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last."
"The absence of hatred in no way implies the absence of moral indignation."
"The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face — and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension."
"You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. At night, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer."
"Nothing special is happening here in the paintersworld [of the Netherlands]; everything stays firmly the same. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"The country [ Brittany ] is very beautiful and painterly one see stimulating color tones; but the more abstract one works, the more one transforms the sketch into combinations. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"That's the way it goes, you know, I'm always dissatisfied and always I want to go on. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"I work a lot and I think a lot. I really want to try to paint on glass. .Please will you ask him [mr. architect Taut ] if there are any transparent colors, which one can use to paint on the glass directly.. .I want to dispose of a new technique in which the artist can paint on the glass directly instead of canvas. When one wants to reach colors spiritually-bright, then a time will come that oil-paint and canvas are no longer suitable.. .So, if you have time, please ask Mr. Taut if he understands my view and maybe he knows the ways how I can follow my direction. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"It is a terrible, but also tremendous time. Personally I find it moreover so important for my art to live now.. .These times force you to think over a lot and work very hard, in Nature now a strong creative force is working. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"I was in Rotterdam, but the exhibition there was horrible. Le Fauconnier has nothing to tell anymore. He has a dirty color now and has become a real academic. Mondrian is completely frozen, no poetry at all anymore. It's terrible that these people can not reach further with great ideals. To my taste paints far too much naturalistic. A big difference, these three, compared to [[w:Franz Marc|[Franz] Marc]], Kandinsky, Filla etc.. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"As an artist you can not stand for long in The Netherlands. You must see a lot and talk a lot about everything.. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"Once again I talked with some painters, but the modern artists [in The Netherlands ] write more than they paint. If you write about art in such a way and you want to paint always with a fixed plan, then you will lose completely the deep, glorious and spontaneous art. You always have to create the new from the very deep, inside. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"All men forget that colors have to radiate to give the big [spiritual] expression. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"This evening the Anthroposophical Society invited me to give a lecture about modern art, on 13 March. They start to wake up here [in the Netherlands].. .Please, tell me something, what I should emphasize, what you find most important. I shall also read something from 'The Spiritual in Art' by Kandinsky.. .But we still have other views on the whole, isn't it. I don't always agree with Kandinsky, and often more with your views. So please write a little much.. .You know, for me it is always easier to paint my principles. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"Every day I am thinking about the Art school [which Walden wants to start in Germany, since 1915-16].. .If our pursuit is really to make great progress in future, the Art school must produce individualities who can with our assist really continue from their inside and start creating on their own, without always studying the pictures of other artists. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"I got the idea to paint people, in the way I see them. From one face I take to my own idea some very characteristic features of it and then I make of the whole a picture in colors and lines, in the way how I meet that person. The whole thing becomes not at all a portrait in the usual sense.. .I have tried to make types, but will built in more and more personal qualities and all that kind of things.. .Everything will be figured out fully abstract of course, it is just a personal feeling and no system at all. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"Again I only gave numbers [of her art-works, she sent for the next Sturm-exhibition]. I stick to my idea of not giving titles. ..Titles are really disgusting romantic, and now in a while people will have hundreds of Spring's, Summers, Trees [paintings], to Liebknecht, Eberts, etc.. Above everything color and line have their own specific language, which doesn't want to be captured in a title. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"On the whole [the alignment of a series of stained glass windows with the interior of a villa in The Hague] I have thought about all the time.. .I want to focus more on the architecture of the interior in general and that should we do together [with architect Buys].. .Now I was already thinking, the enormous color effect that the window will generate - and that will certainly become powerful - must be accompanied with strong colors - the hall -, otherwise the window itself will be too much isolated. For instance the staircase, could it be painted in strong colors and not [in] oak.. ..deep ultramarine blue or green, with a beautiful colorful carpet.. ..I feel I must make designs for carpets, to create in that way a beautiful unity with the stained glass as a whole. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"I don't understand how many painters can be so short-sighted to value art from earlier periods as completely worthless. Every art is an expression of an era and only for that reason already it is interesting. A Rembrandt has gone other ways, but he has certainly also pursued the highest goals. That one can assert: it is not necessary for a painter to have an impression when he is painting an Image, is nonsense. Certainly an artist, if he is really an artist, always has an inner urge to create an Image and thus sees an impression for himself that he may not always be able to explain, because deeper feelings are very difficult to grasp in words, but he has an impression - otherwise he only makes paintings as pure brain work. And intellectual art I can't bear. You can not make abstract art as something on its own. One feel various forms in their inner coherence. For example: when reading a fairy tale I can get the idea to paint a forest in completely abstract forms with motifs of trees. Every abstract form has an inner meaning for me. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"..I am so often showing my work in Germany that I belong to the German moderns.. .I openly want to confess you that I don't value the new painting in my home country very much. That is why I don't have a lot of acquaintances among the painters. Everything here is so little progressive. People's life is to easy here. It is very difficult to keep wide-awake since all are sleeping here. I feel much more at home in Germany. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"For you it must be a great satisfaction that you have done so much for modern art. If Der Sturm had not worked like this for ten years then Germany would not have been at the forefront of the movement. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"Here [in the Netherlands] there is absolutely nothing, nowhere and permanently committees to deliver the visual artists some money, since all are hungry. It is such a difficult time for Holland. I had flu, I was very sick and I am still too weak to work. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"..Also Lady van Heemskerck van Beest has found in Cubism the direction in which she can now express herself preferably. The shape [of cubism] is already so familiar to her that she uses it without much difficulty and with her diligence and good will she moreover knows how to handle the right color soon. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"Jacoba van Heemskerck paints a tree. She doesn't want its appearance, not the object, not the expression which can already be made in some dashes of color to astonish the observer. It is indeed about a tree, but she wants the miracle: standing, spreading itself, bearing its leaves, reaching into space, moving, being a part of the world. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"A revelation, of eternal truth, to mankind. In the middle [of Jacoba's 'Painting No. 23' ] the motif of a floating ship, with the radiant white sail, like a saint spreading his both arms to heaven to absorb all the wisdom of the divine. Next to it, and following the first, the other two [ships], also with immaculate-white sails, but the interior of them not yet unfolded that strong [as the first ship]. In this way they continue, quietly and surely, over the rippling water-surface, towards suffering humanity.. .In the foreground, on both sides, two heavy, powerful black figures of trees, their branches twisted and wringing to each other and thus creating the gate of misery and suffering, through which every person must go who wants to bring something to mankind, what can help. In large angular blocks the earth is shown below, from which the trees grow up, the earth and its fertility. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"for Jacoba van Heemskerck"
"From the power of the senses, Jacoba von Heemskerck has created the images which give meaning to the world. Which interpret the world, Water and Mountain and Tree are her visual impressions, which became the painterly tools to create her pictures. Movement of the elements becomes element of movement. Form of Nature becomes art-form, and impression expression. Parts of the world get transformed into parts of Art. And parts of Art are combined together into one image.. .Jacoba van Heemskerck lived in and with Art. With all her thinking, senses and efforts.. ..her life continues, formed in Art. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"The [glass window]-designs lay ready for months [1922-23] but as the building did not proceed as quickly as it was expected, the glass-cutting was put off again and again. During the last spring it often made her anxious, that the work did not advance, as if she had the feeling that she would never see it finished. And so it was. When at last she had to lie down, never to rise again, the designs lay there, with all the indications how they had to be worked out. Thanks to these minute preparations it has been possible to finish them as a last witness of her genius."
"In the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam an honorary exhibition of the art-works of the woman-painter Jacoba van Heemskerck.. .The collection brought together gives a clear overview of 'working' and 'wanting' for this very special talent. Clearly shown is the road that had to lead her from naturalism to her recent monumental abstract 'compositions' in which she portrayed 'Life': to the great last meeting with 'Architecture'! That combination promised a triumph! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suddenly and unexpectedly death ended up the life of this great person. Before finishing her task, this wonderful young woman died - J.B. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"
"Without my husband I would never have become a painter, and without me he had probably not become a painter. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"
"Although the wife of a famous marine painter, she does not want to be regarded as Mrs. Mesdag in the arts, but as an autonomous female artist, following her own path.."
"For the whole world I became a heroine, very easy, but not complimentary, since I had done nothing in this case, received the most ridiculous letters from places all over the world; especially a steady flow of praises came from France! I have never seen such a exaggerated reaction"
"I have done more for the Boers than my fellow countrymen will ever know"
"only in the intimacy with mother I could be just a human"
"the government did not fulfil the urge in their hearts and felt that the public wished to see me openly revealing my sympathy for our kinsmen; how could I as the head of state!"
"Already then, there was in my subconsciousness as unsatisfactoriness about powerlessness, which was accompanied by being locked in a cage, whereby made taking an initiative, of any kind, impossible"
"to one of which I am attached by bonds of friendship, to other by ties of common origin"
"But 'the' Dutch identity? No, I have not found it. The Netherlands is: large windows without curtains so everyone can look in; but also adherence to privacy and coziness. The Netherlands is: one biscuit at tea; but also great hospitality and warmth. The Netherlands is: sobriety, control and pragmatism; but also the experience of intense emotions together. The Netherlands is far too diverse to summarize in one cliché. 'The' Dutchman does not exist. As a consolation I can tell you that 'the' Argentinian also does not exist. I therefore find it very interesting that the title of the report of the Scientific Council for Government Policy is not 'the Dutch identity'. But: Identification with the Netherlands. That leaves room for development and diversity."
"We are all different, and there is a continuous movement. You will need to continually re-invest in it."