"The new discovery that I have made in painting is the following. There are chords of colors, let's say a certain red and green, which move, shimmer when you look at them. Now if you're looking at a tree in a landscape, you can either look at the tree, or at the landscape, but not both, because of the stereoscopic effect. Now, when you are painting something three-dimensional, the chromatic sound which shimmers is the three-dimensional effect of colour, and when you paint a landscape, and the green foliage shimmers a little with the blue sky showing through it, that happens because the green is on a different plane from the sky in nature too. Finding the space-shaping energies of colour, instead of contenting ourselves with a dead chiaroascuro, is our finest task."
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Original Language: English
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in a letter to artist , 1913, from Lake Thun in Switzerland; as quoted by , in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 145
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/August_Macke
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August Macke
1887 – 1914
deutscher Maler des Expressionismus
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