Painters From Germany

"Beyond the constructive elements of the picture, I studied the tonalities of nature by adding layer upon layer of diluted black watercolour paint. Each layer must dry well. In this way a mathematically correct scale of light and dark values is the result. Squinting facilitates our perception of this phenomenon in nature."

"The changeover was complete; in the summer of 1907 I devoted myself entirely to the appearance of nature and upon these studies built my black-and-white landscapes on glass, 1907/1908."

"He [in general] has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise, i.e., cannot do something else."

"His [ Van Gogh's] pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified."

"Van Gogh is congenial to me, 'Vincent' in his letters. Perhaps nature does have something. There is no need, after all, to speak of the smell of earth; it has too peculiar a savor. The words we use to speak about it, I mean, have too peculair a savor. Too bad that the early Van Gogh was so fine a human being, but not so good as a painter, and that the later, wonderful artist is such a marked man. A mean should be found between these four points pf comparison: then, yes!"

"My etchings have.. ..the mistake of being processed as images and to have at the same time the meaning of epigrams. It is the union of pure painting with pure graphics.. .From now onwards my task will be the division of art and graphics, and the full development of both fields. The pure art has already turned to impressionism and the graphics is going to do it."

"To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers."

"The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it."

"..(Then come the lovers of art / and contemplate the bleeding work from outside. / Then come the photographers. / "New art," it says in the newspaper the following day. / The learned journals / give it a name that ends in "ism")."

"Am I God? / I have accumulated so many great things in me! / My head aches to the point of bursting. / It has to hold an overview of power. / May you want (are you worthy of it?) / that it be born to you."

"The law that supports space - this should be the title appropriate to one of my future pictures!"

"Things are not quite so simple with 'pure' art as it is dogmatically claimed. In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better. In this sense I shall never be a pure artist as the dogma defines him. We higher creatures are also mechanically produced children of God, and yet intellect and soul operate within us in completely different dimensions."

"In earlier versions of 'Woman and Beast' the woman suffered too much. Later I gave her that not altogether disgusted expression. Dissertations could be written about the significance of the 'ugliness' of my figures."

"What does the artist create? Forms and spaces! How does he create them? In certain chosen proportions.. .O satire, you plague of intellectuals."

"When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed."

"Our initial perplexity before nature is explained by our seeing at first the small outer branches and not penetrating to the main branches or the trunk. But once this is realized, one will perceive a repetition of the whole law even in the outermost leaf and turn it to good use."

"Towards the end of the month I prepared engravings; first, invented appropriate drawings. Not that I want to become a specialist now. But painting with its failures cries out for the relief of minor successes. Nowadays I am a very tired painter, but my skill as a draftsman holds [me] up."

"When in Italy [Klee stayed in Italy, in 1901], I learned to understand architectural monuments.. .Even the dullest will understand that the obvious commensurability of parts, to each other and to the whole, corresponds to the hidden numerical proportions that exist in other artificial and natural organisms. It is clear that these figures are not cold and dead, but full of the breath of life; and the importance of measurements as an aid to study and creation becomes evident."

"Serious color studies of nudes and heads. Only as practice and first training. Very strict determination of color values through water color. On top of it, some oils, simply for blending. The results are quite unattractive, little of importance to be hoped for here. This month of February is devoted to color. I painted many nudes from nature and even the portrait of a head, my syster's!"

"Formerly it frequently happened to me that when questioned regarding a picture I simply did not know what it represented. I had not seen the subject, so to say. Now I have also included the content so that I know most of the time what is represented. But this only supports my experience that what matters in the ultimate end is the abstract meaning of harmonization (note from a letter, 1903)"

"Everything that used to be foreign to me, at the rational procedures in my profession, I now begin to resort to after all, from necessity, at least as a matter of experiment. Apparently I am becoming perfectly sober and small, perfectly unpoetic and unenthusiastic. I imagine a very small formal motif and try to execute it economically."

"I project on the surface; that is, the essence of the subject must always become visible, even if this is impossible in nature, which is not adapted to this relief style. The absence of foreshortening also plays a crucial part in the process.. .For I have discovered a very small, undisputed, personal possession: a particular sort of three-dimensional representation on the flat surface.. .I am my style."

"The naked body is an altogether suitable object. In art classes I have gradually learned something of it from every angle. But now I will no more project some plan of it: I will proceed so that all its essentials, even those hidden by optical perspective, will appear upon the paper. And thus a little uncontested personal property has already been discovered, a style has been created."

"It is a great difficulty and great necessity to have to start with the smallest. I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing, about Europe; ignoring poets and fashions, to be almost primitive. Then I want to do something very modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil; will be able to hold without any technique. One favorable moment is enough. The little thing is easily and concisely set down. It's already done! It was a tiny but real affair, and someday, through the repetition of such small but original deeds, there will come one work upon which I can really build."

"The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions."

"I have a feeling that sooner or later I shall arrive at something legitimate, only I must begin, not with hypotheses, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. If I then succeed in distinguishing a clear structure, I get more from it than from a lofty imaginary construction. And the typical will automatically follow from a series of examples."

"But by way of consolation: it is valueless to paint premature things, what counts is to be a personality, or at least to become one. The domination of life is one of the basic conditions of productive expression. For me this is surely the case; when I am depressed I am unable even to think about it – and this holds true for painting, sculpture, tragedy, or music. But I believe that pictures alone will abundantly fill out this one life."

"I have now reached the point where I can look over the great art of antiquity and its Renaissance. But, for myself, I cannot find any artistic connection with our own times. And to want to create something outside of one's own age strikes me as suspect. Great perplexity. This is why I am again all on the side of satire. Am I to be completely absorbed by it once more? For the time being it is my only creed. Perhaps I shall never become positive? In any case, I will defend myself like a wild beast."

"I am God / So much of the divine / is heaped in me / that I cannot die. My head burns to the point of bursting. One of the worlds / hidden in it / wants to be born. / But now I must suffer / to bring it forth."

"My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones."

"Thoughts about the art of portraiture. Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface (this can be done by the photographic plate), but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones."

"..I served Beauty by drawing her enemies."

"To be a student of Stuck [1898 - 1900] sounded good. In reality, however, it was not half so splendid. Instead of coming to him with a sound mind I brought a thousand pains and many prejudices. In the realm of colour I found it hard to progress. Since the tone provided by mood predominated strongly in my mastery of form, I sought to find as much profit as possible here at least. And, in this respect, a great deal really was to be gained at Stuck's. Naturally I was not the only one, at this time, to be deficient in the realm of color. Later, in his monograph, Kandinsky passed a similar judgement on this school [of Stuck]."

"Twenty-one years old! I never doubted my vital force. But how is it to fare with my chosen art? The recognition that at bottom I am a poet, after all, should be no hindrance in the plastic arts! And should I really have to be a poet, Lord knows what else I should desire. Certainly, a sea swells within me, for I feel. It is a hopeless state, to feel in such a way that the storm rages on all sides at once and that nowhere is a lord who commands the chaos."

"The conviction that painting is the right profession grows stronger and stronger in me. Writing is the only other thing I still feel attracted to. Perhaps when I am mature I shall go back to it."

"Music, for me, is a love bewitched. / Fame as a painter? / Writer, modern poet? Bad joke. / So I have no calling, and loaf."

"You know what I want to become temporarily today: a painter? No. A simple and common designer. But a biting one. I would like to deride humanity, nothing less. And this with the simplest means, in black and white. At the same time - oh blasphemy - I would like to attack our Lord adequately."

"As time passes I become more and more afraid of my growing love of music. I don’t understand myself. I play solo sonatas by Bach: next to them, what is Böcklin? It makes me smile."

"But I shall let the little I have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet a means whereby this truth has come to light."

"Whoever … proves his point and demonstrates the prime truth geometrically should be believed by all the world, for there we are captured."

"Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art."

"Since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art."

"My father suffered much and toiled painfully all his life, for he had no resources other than the proceeds of his trade from which to support himself and his wife and family. He led an honest, God-fearing life. His character was gentle and patient. He was friendly towards all and full of gratitude to his Maker. He cared little for society and nothing for worldly amusements. A man of very few words and deeply pious, he paid great attention to the religious education of his children. His most earnest hope was that the high principles he instilled into their minds would render them ever more worthy of divine protection and the sympathy of mankind. He told us every day that we must love God and be honourable in our dealings with our neighbours."

"There is no man on earth who can give a final judgment on what the most beautiful shape may be. Only God knows."

"The new art must be based upon science — in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences."

"'a true victim of the war; the hellish delusion of being sent back into battle had deranged him and flung him helplessly onto the shabby bed of a third-class hotel.. .In Davos I found an emaciated man with a piercing, feverish gaze, who saw imminent death before his eyes."

"Eberhard Grisebach, in a letter March 1917 to Helen Spengler; as quoted by E. W. Kornfield, Stauffer, Christine E. Stauffer (1992). Biography Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kirchner Museum Davos. Retrieved March 21, 2016; from Wikipedia: Kirchner"

"A colourfully painted curtain concealed a large collection of paintings [in Kirchner's studio in Berlin]. When we began to look at them, he came alive. Together with me, he saw all his experiences drift by on canvas, the small, timid-looking woman set aside what we had seen and brought a bottle of wine. He made short explanatory remarks in a weary voice. Each picture had its own particular colourful character, a great sadness was present in all of them; what I had previously found to be incomprehensible and unfinished now created the same delicate and sensitive impression as his personality. Everywhere a search for style, for psychological understanding of his figures. The most moving was a self-portrait in uniform with his right hand cut off. Then he showed me his travel permit for Switzerland. He wanted to go back to Davos.. ..and implored me to ask father for a medical certificate.."

"We [Kirchner and Bleyl] established [c. 1902-03, in Dresden] a friendly relationship at once, and, striving for the same goals, we quickly developed a close friendship. We were constantly together, either at the Hochschule [Architecture], in our lodgings, or taking walks in the evenings, in the Grosser Garten in Dresden. We were never without pencil and paper."

"[Kirchner's studio was] that of a real bohemian, full of paintings lying all over the place, drawings, books and artist's materials — much more like an artist's romantic lodgings than the home of a well-organised architecture student."