Abstract Art Quotes

• There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Art, Reality

  Pablo Picasso (1964*). “Picasso and Man”

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• abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality.

  Piet Mondrian

  Art, Reality, Vision

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• Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes.

  Arshile Gorky

  Eye, Men, Mind

  Arshile Gorky (2005). “Նամակներ”

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• The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

  Lucian Freud

  Motivational, Art, Real

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• Abstract art is uniquely modern. It is a fundamentally romantic response to modern life - rebellious, individualistic, unconventional, sensitive, irritable.

  Robert Motherwell

  Art, Modern Life, Unconventional

  Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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• There is no must in art because art is free.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Art, Freedom, Painter

  Wassily Kandinsky (1981). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.52, Library of Alexandria

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• Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description.

  Robert Genn

  Suggestions, Mystery, Description

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• Abstract art has helped us to experience the emotional power inherent in pure form.

  Anton Ehrenzweig

  Art, Emotional, Abstract

  Anton Ehrenzweig (1967). “The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Imagination”, p.147, Univ of California Press

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• Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas.

  Arshile Gorky

  Art, Eye, Men

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• I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basic sensations of the eyes.

  Jean Helion

  Art, Eye, Imagination

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• Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.

  Josef Albers

  Real, Abstraction

  Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (2001). “The prints of Josef Albers: a catalogue raisonné, 1915-1976”, Hudson Hills

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• Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

  Jackson Pollock

  Abstract Painting, Compliment, Expressionism

  Quoted in FrancisVO'Connor Jackson Pollock (1967).

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• Abstract art is a creative interplay between the conscious and the unconscious, with the conscious mind making all the final decisions and in control throughout.

  Lawren Harris

  Art, Creative, Decision

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• Abstract art was the quivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words,but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.

  Etel Adnan

  Art, Expression, Color

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• Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

  Al Capp

  Sarcastic, Art, Architecture

  In National Observer 1 July 1963

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• Abstract art is a fundamental distrust of the theory of reality concocted by the eyes.

  Robert Breault

  Art, Eye, Reality

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• Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.

  Robert Motherwell

  Art, Profound, Innovation

  Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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• Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Art, Real, World

  Hajo Düchting, Wassily Kandinsky (1993). “Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: A Revolution in Painting”, Taschen

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• In every landscape should reside jewels of abstract art waiting to be discovered.

  Melissa Brown

  Art, Jewels, Waiting

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• Realism' has been abandoned in the search for reality: the 'principal objective' of abstract art is precisely this reality.

  Ben Nicholson

  Art, Reality, Abandoned

  Peter Khoroche, Ben Nicholson (2002). “Ben Nicholson: drawings and painted reliefs”, Lund Humphries Publishers

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• It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, May, Abstract

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

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• We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Hungry, Thirsty

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• But nobody is visually naive any longer. We are cluttered with images, and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine.

  Dominique de Menil

  Art, Divine, Abstract

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• The works of 'abstract' art are subtle creations of order out of simple contrasting elements.

  Jan Tschichold

  Art, Simple, Order

  Jan Tschichold (1967). “Asymmetric Typography”, New York : Reinhold Publishing Corporation

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• Every good painter paints what he is.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Paint, Artist

  Jackson Pollock, Bernice Rose, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1980). “Jackson Pollock, drawing into painting”, Icon

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