“It is not the subject that matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface.”— Max Beckmann
“I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects.”— Piet Mondrian
“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.”— Franz Marc
“The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore, the object must be eliminated from the picture.”— Piet Mondrian
“I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter.”— Milton Avery
“The strong current of abstraction in modern mathematics is in danger of degenerating into sterile dogmatism if it is not revivified from time to time by contact with the reality of applications.”— Richard Courant
“The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.”— Edsger W. Dijkstra
“Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.”— Edsger W. Dijkstra
“In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the square.”— Kazimir Malevich
“Suprematism is the rediscovery of pure art that, in the course of time, had become obscured by the accumulation of 'things'.”— Kazimir Malevich
“The world of visual art is a world of pure abstraction. It's a world of color, shape, and form.”— Peter Max