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I don't paint to live, I live to paint.
Willem de Kooning
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Willem de Kooning
Age: 92 †
Born: 1904
Born: April 24
Died: 1997
Died: March 19
Artist
Designer
Drawer
Painter
Sculptor
University Teacher
R'dam
Willem De Kooning
Willem DeKooning
William de Kooning
Willem Dekooning
willem de kooning
Paint
Passion
Art
Live
More quotes by Willem de Kooning
Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I can change overnight.
Willem de Kooning
If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.
Willem de Kooning
Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
Willem de Kooning
Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.
Willem de Kooning
Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.
Willem de Kooning
Art should not have to be a certain way.
Willem de Kooning
Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.
Willem de Kooning
The texture of experience is prior to everything else.
Willem de Kooning
I might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute.
Willem de Kooning
I read somewhere that Rubens said students should not draw from life, but draw from all the great classic casts. Then you really get the measure of them, you really know what to do. And then, put in your own dimples. Isn't that marvelous!
Willem de Kooning
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.
Willem de Kooning
Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree.
Willem de Kooning
If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today.
Willem de Kooning
Content is a glimpse.
Willem de Kooning
I see the canvas and I begin... It's a necessary evil to get into the work, and it's pretty marvelous to be able to get out of it.
Willem de Kooning
Even abstract shapes must have a likeness
Willem de Kooning
I feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history.
Willem de Kooning
The past does not influence me I influence it.
Willem de Kooning
The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.
Willem de Kooning
You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.
Willem de Kooning
