Complementary Colors Quotes

• All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.

  Marc Chagall

  Life, Color, Opposites

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• An artist finds his happiest combination in a play of complementary colors. They are direct contrasts yet do not jar; they awaken the beholder, but do not disturb him.

  Charles E. Burchfield

  Artist, Color, Play

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• To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Color, Two, Vibrations

  Naomi E. Maurer, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin (1998). “The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: The Thought and Art of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin”, p.74, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• There are colors which cause each other to shine brilliantly, which form a couple which complete each other like man and woman.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Couple, Men, Color

  Derek Fell, Vincent van Gogh (2001). “Van Gogh's Gardens”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• I am always in the hope to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors - colors which marry each other... complement each other as a man and a woman do.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Men, Two, Color

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• My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.

  Henri Matisse

  Color, Choices, Feelings

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.41, Univ of California Press

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• My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like Signac is preoccupied with complementary colors, and the theoretical knowledge of them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation.

  Henri Matisse

  Artist, Color, Choices

  "Artists on Art - from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, London, p. 412, 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), 1972.

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• There is indeed no such thing in life as absolute darkness; one's eyes revolt and hasten to fill the vacuum by floating in sparks, dream patterns, figures whimsical and figures grotesque, shifting and clad in complementary colors, to appease the indignant cups and rods of the retina.

  Gelett Burgess

  Dream, Eye, Color

  Gelett Burgess (1916). “The Romance of the Commonplace”

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• I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation

  Henri Matisse

  Color, Trying, Sensations

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.41, Univ of California Press

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• What I most cherish is the observation of the movement of colors. Only in this have I found the laws of those simultaneous and complementary color contrasts that nourish the actual rhythm of my vision. In this I find the actual essence, an essence which is not born out of an a priori system or theory.

  August Macke

  Color, Law, Essence

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• To express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of Kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of light tone against a somber background; to express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Stars, Sunset, Light

  Letter to brother Theo, from Arles, September 1888.

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