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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

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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
Must
Details
Garrulous
Truly
Taciturn
Lasts
Prodigal
Point
Prodigals
Last
Frugal
Artist
Detail
Nature
Afford
Everything
Confusion

More quotes by Paul Klee

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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.
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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.
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To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.
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Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.
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When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.
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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.
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I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.
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A certain fire pretends to be alive it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.
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Spatial art does not begin with a poetic mood or idea, but with construction of one or more figures, with the harmonizing of several colors and tones, or with the devaluation of spatial relationships and so on.
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All is well with me. The rain doesn't reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There's no shortage of work, either.
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All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.
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In my productive activity, every time a type grows beyond the stage of its genesis, and I have about reached the goal, the intensity gets lost very quickly, and I have to look for new ways.
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Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.
Paul Klee
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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.
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I paint in order not to cry.
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What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many.
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A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Paul Klee
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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.
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One day I will lie nowhere with an angel at my side.
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Art does not reproduce the visible it makes visible.
Paul Klee