Wassily Kandinsky QUOTES

1 " Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. "

― Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

2 " Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. "

― Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

3 " Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with its many chords. The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically. "

― Wassily Kandinsky

4 " 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 , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

5 " 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 , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

6 " With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing. "

― Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

7 " Art becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work.

Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away. "

― Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

8 " 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 , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

9 " Form itself, even if completely abstract ... has its own inner sound. "

― Wassily Kandinsky

10 " What would it take to make you intervene "

― Wassily Kandinsky

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

― Wassily Kandinsky

12 " … lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want? "

― Wassily Kandinsky

13 " That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul. "

― Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

14 " Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks. "

― Wassily Kandinsky

15 " 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 , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

16 " Those [things] that we encounter for the first time immediately have a spiritual effect upon us. A child, for whom every object is new, experiences the world in this way: it sees light, is attracted by it, wants to grasp it, burns its finger in the process, and thus learns fear and respect for the flame. "

― Wassily Kandinsky

17 " Music is the ultimate teacher. "

― Wassily Kandinsky

18 " 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

19 " 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 , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

20 " The eyes are hammers. "

― Wassily Kandinsky

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