Top 90 Wassily Kandinsky Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Everything starts from a dot.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

2. “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

3. “Music is the ultimate teacher.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

4. “Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

5. “The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

6. “Color transmits and translates emotion.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

7. “There is no must in art because art is free.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

8. “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

9. “To create a work of art is to create the world.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

10. “Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

11. “The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

12. “Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with ‘reality,’ next to the ‘real’ world.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

13. “The sensations of colors on the palette can be spiritual experiences.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

14. “Only just now awakening after years of materialism, our soul is still infected with the despair born of unbelief, of lack of purpose and aim.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

15. “The eyes are hammers.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

16. “Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

17. “The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

18. “In the hierarchy of colors, green represents the social middle class, self-satisfied, immovable, narrow...”

— Wassily Kandinsky

19. “With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist’s soul, in musical sound.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

20. “Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

21. “In general, therefore, color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

22. “The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

23. “Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his heart is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will someday reach to heaven.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

24. “The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

25. “That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

26. “The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble...”

— Wassily Kandinsky

27. “The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

28. “Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

29. “Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

30. “Everything shows me its face, its innermost being, its secret soul, which is more often silent than heard.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

31. “The world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

32. “In your works, you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

33. “The joy of life consists in the inevitable, continual triumph of new values.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

34. “The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

35. “The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

36. “Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of joy, grief, or passion. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

37. “Objects damage pictures.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

38. “The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

39. “Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

40. “Each color lives by its mysterious life.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

41. “The spirit is often concealed within matter to such an extent that few people are generally capable of perceiving it.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

42. “The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

43. “As a picture painted in yellow always radiates spiritual warmth, or as one in blue has apparently a cooling effect, so green is only boring.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

44. “I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas with a palette knife, and I made them sing with all the intensity I could...”

— Wassily Kandinsky

45. “The artist must be blind to distinction between ‘recognized’ or ‘unrecognized’ conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

46. “The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

47. “I value those artists who embody the expression of their life.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

48. “In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

49. “Empty canvas. In appearance – really empty, silent, indifferent. Stunned, almost. In effect – full of tensions, with thousand subdued voices, heavy with expectations. A little frightened because it may be violated.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

50. “Doubts must be resolved alone within the soul. Otherwise one would profane one’s own powerful solution.”

— Wassily Kandinsky