It is not the subject which matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface by means of painting. Therefore I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.

as quoted in Max Beckmann – On my Painting, Tate Publishing London, 2003, pp. 12-13 - 'On my painting' (1938)