German Artist Quotes

Günter Grass

Max Ernst

Paul Klee

Caspar David Friedrich

Leni Riefenstahl

George Grosz

Franz Marc

Art is something given, not reproduced... the painter paints what he sees with his innermost senses, the expression of his being.. every other impression becomes, for him, an inner expression.

Herwarth Walden

For me, painting means the continuation of dreaming by other means.

I'd like to briefly state the accomplishment that we expect from a photographer. He must make the person being photographed forget that he has eaten from the tree of knowledge.

Albert Renger-Patzsch

I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

I don't make fun of a face. I make fun of what is behind that face.

A toothache, not to be perverse, Is an unmitigated curse...

It's the procedures in and for themselves that interest me. The picture isn't really necessary.

The body is like a sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams.

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

Caspar David Friedrich

And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.

Infinitesimal is the nearest to zero infinitesimal is so small that it is no longer something but it is not yet nothing.

Cry, Art, cry and lament loudly, nobody nowadays wants you.

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.

Everything is love. "HEAVEN ON EARTH" our idea of heaven has been formed by painting and nothing else. I love pure, bright colours, their intellectual clarity of expression conveying nothing but feeling. Painting - the inspired animation of the surface.

Stefan Szczesny

We desire to achieve to the socialist republic not only the recovery of the conditions of art, but also the beginning of a unified artistic area for our time.

In studying the problem of the painting of Christ's figure, I found it to be the painting of the great problem of life. To me He was the bringer of light to the darkness of the world. Many of the French artists wished to find the light in Nature. I wished to find the light within the figure that I was presenting. In Christ I grasped the embodiment of the outward and the inward light. I wished to bring things out of the darkness, as Rembrandt found all things through light.

Religion without art is a dead system of dogmas which have no effect on life.

Anagarika Govinda

Neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures; it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to life. Art contains the allied ideas of making and begetting, of being master of one's craft and able to create. Without these properties no art exists and no photographic art can come into being

Helmut Gernsheim

Mixed feelings when he [Max Ernst frequently writes about himself in the third person] enters the forest for the first time: delight and oppression. And what the Romantics spoke of as 'being at one with Nature'. Wonderful joy in breathing freely in an open space, but also anxiety at being encircled by hostile trees. Outside and inside at the same time, free and trapped.

Something is beautiful if it is honest. If you do an engaged piece of work, which is sincere, the concept of beauty meets the concept of truth. So no illusive harmony. I try to reach people who strive for truth, for identity. Although these conceptions are incredibly warn out, one must try to find the way back to these simple conceptions.

Jörg Immendorff

There is no communication with any public whatsoever. The artist can ask no question, and he makes no statement; he offers no information, and his work cannot be used. It is the end product which counts.

The essence of art can never change. I'm convinced you can't talk about art. At best, you will have a translation, a poetic paraphrase, & as for that I'll leave that to the poets.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only thing that arouses interest, and the response to the pictures varies according to current political circumstance. I find this rather a distraction.

Gerhard Richter

I love color. It must submit to me. And I love art. I kneel before it, and it must become mine. Everything around me glows with passion. Every day reveals a new red flower, glowing, scarlet red. Everyone around me carries them. Some wear them quietly hidden in their hearts. And they are like poppies just opening, of which one can see only here and there a hint of red petal peeking out from the green bud.

Paula Modersohn-Becker

It was the desire for living, vital expression.... which built Gothic cathedrals, which created Mozart sonatas. I believe it is going to stay that way for long time to come.