Top 90 Wassily Kandinsky Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

52. “I really believe that I am the first and only artist to throw not just the ‘subject’ out of my paintings, but every ‘object’ as well.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

53. “The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions of every part of the work.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

54. “Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

55. “Efforts to revive the art principles of the past at best produce works of art that resemble a stillborn child.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

56. “The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

57. “Repetition is a potent means of heightening the inner vibration and is, at the same time, a source of elementary rhythm which, in turn, is a means to the attainment of elementary harmony in every form of art.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

58. “Every phenomenon can be experienced in two ways. These two ways are not arbitrary, but are bound up with the phenomenon – developing out of its nature and characteristics : Externally – or – inwardly.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

59. “If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

60. “Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

61. “Colors produce a spiritual vibration, the impression they create is important only as a step towards this vibration.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

62. “An empty canvas is a living wonder – far lovelier than certain pictures.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

63. “The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

64. “In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

65. “Art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

66. “Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

67. “Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

68. “An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance – almost dull, in fact – in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

69. “All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

70. “The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

71. “The artist is not a ‘Sunday child’ for whom everything immediately succeeds. He does not have the right to live without duty. The task that is assigned to him is painful, it is a heavy cross for him to bear.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

72. “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. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

73. “Color cannot stand alone.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

74. “The true work of art is born from the ‘artist’: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

75. “Blue is the typical heavenly colour. The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks to almost black, it echos grief that is hardly human.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

76. “It should not be forgotten that art is not a science where the latest ‘correct’ theory declares the old to be false and erases it.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

77. “Form itself, even if completely abstract... has its own inner sound.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

78. “A parallel between color and music can only be relative – just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

79. “Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

80. “The artist must be blind to “recognized” and “unrecognized” form, deaf to the teachings and desires of his time. His open eyes must be directed to his inner life and his ears must be constantly attuned to the voice of inner necessity.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

81. “To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

82. “The word compositon moved me spiritually and I made it my aim in life to paint a composition. It affected me like a prayer and filled me with awe.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

83. “A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

84. “In place of an intensive cooperation among artists, there is a battle for goods. Hatred, partisanship, cliques, jealousy, and intrigues are the natural consequences of an aimless, materialist art.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

85. “When I was thirteen or fourteen I bought a paintbox with oil paints from money slowly saved up. The feeling I had at the time – or better – the experience of color coming slowly out of the tube – is with me to this day.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

86. “What would it take to make you intervene.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

87. “It is essential that the painter should develop not only his eyes, but also his soul, so that it too may be capable of weighing colors in balance...”

— Wassily Kandinsky

88. “The force that propels the human spirit on the clear way forward and upward is the abstract spirit.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

89. “The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

90. “Today is the great day of one of the revelations of this world. The interrelationships of these individual realms were illumined as by a flash of lightning; they burst unexpected, frightening, and joyous out of the darkness. Never were they so strongly tied together and never so sharply divided...”

— Wassily Kandinsky

91. “There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

92. “Painting took on a fabulous strength and splendor; the object was discredited as an indispensable element of the picture.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

93. “The organic laws of construction tangled me in my desires, and only with great pain, effort, and struggle did I break through these ’walls around art.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

94. “Kandinsky did not see his divorced parents as hostile figures of authority. They were merely two very different people who were devoted to him and who, in their own way, fostered his sensitivity. But particularly in his mother he saw the best qualities – “grave, austere beauty, well-bred simplicity, boundless energy.”

— Wassily Kandinsky