Russian Artist Quotes

Wassily Kandinsky

Mikhail Lermontov

El Lissitsky

Kazimir Malevich

Marie Bashkirtseff

Alexej von Jawlensky

Daniil Kharms

... There's a machine which is called History of Art, which is a structure. And artist fits in this only because he or she is needed for this structure. If for example the History of Art needs some parallel lines, there is an individual who makes parallel lines. And this individual fits into this machine which works by itself; it doesn't care about people or anything else, it just goes by itself.

Alexander Melamid

At the present time man's path lies through space, and Suprematism is a colour metaphor in its infinite abyss.

Kazimir Malevich

Put simply, I want to teach people in this country to tell lies from the truth and to tell bad from good.... This is what our people still cannot do.

To live, to have so much ambition, to suffer, to cry, to fight and, at the end, forgetfulness... as if I had never existed.

Marie Bashkirtseff

Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol's advice, write down that today there's nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.

You probably think that my future landscapes will be soaked in pessimism, so to speak? Don't worry, I love nature too much.

I painted these 'Variations' for some years and then I found it necessary to find form for the face, because I had come to understand that great art can only be painted with religious feeling. And that, I could only bring to the human face. I understood that the artist must express through his art, in forms and colours, the divine in him. Therefore a work of art is God made visible and art is 'a longing for God'.

Alexej von Jawlensky

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

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.

Mikhail Lermontov

We consider the triumph of the constructive method to be essential for our present. We find it not only in the new economy and in the development of the industry, but also in the psychology of our contemporaries of art. Veshch will champion constructive art, whose mission is not, after all, to embellish life, but to organize it.

Art has no need of philosophical arguments, it does not follow the signposts of philosophical systems; Art like life, dictates systems to philosophy.

I cannot kill. Unfortunately, there are so many who can and do kill. As I cannot kill I cannot authorize others to kill. Do you see? If you are buying from a butcher you are authorizing him to kill — kill helpless, dumb creatures, which neither I nor you could kill ourselves. So that I am for that reason a vegetarian, as most Russians are. For nine years I have been a vegetarian, and I shall be one — mind, I am a man with strong convictions — to the end of my life.

Paolo Troubetzkoy