Franz Marc

“The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art will be, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.”

“We will no longer paint a forest or a horse as we have been accustomed to see it, but as it is in reality, as the forest or the horse feels itself, its absolute essence, which lives behind the appearance we see.”

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

“Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour that must be fought and vanquished by the other two.”

“The great artists do not seek their forms in the midst of the fog, but in the most definite and clear-cut ideas.”

“Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.”

“I am beginning to see the world with different eyes.”

“Is there a more mysterious idea for an artist than the conception of how nature is mirrored in the eyes of an animal?”

“What appears to us today as the new, the unusual, as the improbable, is perhaps the reality of tomorrow.”

“The art of the future will be the expression of our innermost selves.”

“Tradition is a splendid thing, but it is not a shackle. It is a root which gives us the sap to grow, but we must not be content to remain at the root; we must bear flowers and fruits.”

“I am trying to heighten my sense of the organic rhythm of all things, to feel myself pantheistically into the trembling and flowing of the blood of nature - in the trees, in the animals, in the air.”