Benjamin Shahn

“Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.”

“The form is the shape of the content.”

“I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate.”

“You might say I'm a social painter. But I'm not a propagandist, except for the propaganda of my own convictions.”

“I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.”

“Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.”

“The question is not what to paint but how to be.”

“Art is the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced.”

“The artist must be a part of the world, a part of his time, and he must be a voice for his time.”

“An artist is a man who has a vision of the world, of his world, and who wants to tell it.”