Quote

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

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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
Expression
Graphic
Achieve
Confined
Quality
Tendency
Great
Inherent
Time
Tendencies
Outlines
Like
Fairy
Linear
Abstract
Imagery
Toward
Precision

More quotes by Paul Klee

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In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.
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The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
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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.
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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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Becoming is superior to being.
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Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
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Genius is the error in the system.
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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.
Paul Klee
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In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me at such times I am annihilated, but at peace. This would be fine for old people but I... I am my life's debtor, for I have given promises.
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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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Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk.
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Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.
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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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He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.
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Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain.
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Art does not reproduce the visible it makes visible.
Paul Klee
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I paint in order not to cry.
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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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Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.
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One day I will lie nowhere with an angel at my side.
Paul Klee