Wassily Kandinsky Quotes

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

Wassily Kandinsky
Efforts to revive the art principles of the past at best produce works of art that resemble a stillborn child.

Wassily Kandinsky
Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings.

Wassily Kandinsky
Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

Wassily Kandinsky
Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world.

Wassily Kandinsky
That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.

Wassily Kandinsky
In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.

Wassily Kandinsky
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
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
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
The joy of life consists in the inevitable, continual triumph of new values.

Wassily Kandinsky
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.

Wassily Kandinsky
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
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
Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the strings.The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

Wassily Kandinsky