Paul Klee Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

  Dream, Style, Mind

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• There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result … in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things.

  Paul Klee

  Music, Art, Learning

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• Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment

  Paul Klee

  Blessed, Taken, Forever

  Paul Klee (1966). “Paul Klee : (1879 - 1940)”

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• To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke.

  Paul Klee

  Lasts, Harmony, Achieve

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• My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.

  Paul Klee

  Hands, Ripe Fruit, Instruments

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.387, Univ of California Press

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• My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.

  Paul Klee

  Real, Writing, Heart

  Paul Klee (2015). “Paul Klee”, p.18, Parkstone International

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• I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing. Then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil will be able to hold without technique.

  Paul Klee

  Knowing Nothing, Drawing, Work Out

  "Artists on Art, from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, p. 442, 1972.

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• The artist of today is more than an improved camera, he is more complex, richer, and wider. He is a creature on the earth and a creature within the whole, that is, a creature on a star among stars.

  Paul Klee

  Stars, Artist, Cameras

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.154, Parkstone International

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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.

  Paul Klee

  Heart, Artist, Desire

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• The creation lives as genesis beneath the visible surface of the work. All intelligent people see this after the fact, but only the creative see it before the fact - in the future.

  Paul Klee

  Creativity, Intelligent, People

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.308, Univ of California Press

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• An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk's sake.

  Paul Klee

  Moving, Drawing, Goal

  Pedagogical Sketchbook ch. 1 (1925)

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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.

  Paul Klee

  Goal, Looks, Way

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.115, Parkstone International

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• Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal.

  Paul Klee

  Arrows, Goal, Fulfillment

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• The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.

  Paul Klee

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.192, Univ of California Press

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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.

  Paul Klee

  Expression, Quality, Fairy

  Paul Klee (1969). “Paul Klee: Watercolors, Drawings, Writings”

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• ...A long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color.

  Paul Klee

  Lying, Struggle, Color

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.75, Univ of California Press

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• Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar. Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible.

  Paul Klee

  Art, Doe, Visible

  'Creative Credo' (1920) in 'Inward Vision' (1958) p. 5

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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.

  Paul Klee

  Character, Self, Views

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• Reduction! One wants to say more than nature and one makes the impossible mistake of wanting to say it with more means than she, instead of fewer.

  Paul Klee

  Mistake, Mean, Simplicity

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.98, Parkstone International

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• First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.

  Paul Klee

  Art, Philosophy, Real

  "Klee, A Study of His Life and Work". Book by Gualtieri Di San Lazzaro, 1964.

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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.

  Paul Klee

  Beauty, Beautiful, Dark

  Paul Klee (2012). “Paul Klee”, p.102, Parkstone International

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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.

  Paul Klee

  God, Sarcasm, Men

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.122, Univ of California Press

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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

  Art, Space, Color

  Paul Klee (1967). “Paul Klee, 1879-1940: A Retrospective Exhibition”

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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

  Artist, Confusion, Details

  Diary entry for 1909, No. 857. "The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918", p. 236, 1968.

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• To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.

  Paul Klee

  Thinking, Numbers, Giving

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