Quote

Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail. Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

Paul Klee

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Klee
Age: 61 †
Born: 1879
Born: February 18
Died: 1940
Died: May 29
Designer
Graphic Artist
Lithographer
Painter
University Teacher
Visual Artist
Münchenbuchsee BE
p. klee
Klee
Paul Klee
Everything
Confusion
Must
Details
Garrulous
Truly
Taciturn
Lasts
Prodigal
Point
Prodigals
Last
Frugal
Artist
Detail
Nature
Afford

More quotes by Paul Klee

Image
Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour.
Paul Klee
Image
A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision.
Paul Klee
Image
The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul Klee
Image
There is no substitute for intuition.
Paul Klee
Image
He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.
Paul Klee
Image
I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.
Paul Klee
Image
A line comes into being. It goes out for a walk, so to speak, aimlessly for the sake of the walk.
Paul Klee
Image
The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.
Paul Klee
Image
A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Paul Klee
Image
To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.
Paul Klee
Image
Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning, and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind.
Paul Klee
Image
Every artist would like to live in the central organ of creation... Not all are destined to get there... but our beating hearts drive us deep down, right into the pit of creation.
Paul Klee
Image
One day I will lie nowhere with an angel at my side.
Paul Klee
Image
Art does not reproduce the visible it makes visible.
Paul Klee
Image
I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the reemergence of a self without blinkers.
Paul Klee
Image
Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.
Paul Klee
Image
Make chance essential.
Paul Klee
Image
We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole. But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X.
Paul Klee
Image
It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.
Paul Klee
Image
Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a human being and want to climb a few steps, but really climb them.
Paul Klee