Art Quotations

Silverwood Stream

by Famous Artists and Art Lovers

"A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light."

Henri Matisse

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Sonnet by Michelangelo

Well nigh the voyage now is overpast
   And my frail bark through trouble seas and rude
Draws near that common haven where at last
   Of every action, be it evil or good
Must due account be rendered. Well I know
   How then will then appear that favored art.
Sole Idol long and Monarch of my heart,
   For all is vain that man desires below.

And now remorseful thoughts the past unbraid,
   And fear of twofold death my soul alarms,
That which must come, and that beyond the grave.
   Picture and sculpture lose their feeble charms
And to that Love Divine I turn for aid,
   Who from the cross extends his arms to save.

                 (Translated by Wordsworth)

"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transofrom a yellow spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso

"The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing."

                                                Eugene Delacroix

 "A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."  Michelangelo

"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. "

                                                                             Albert Einstein

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for."                  Georgia O'Keeffe

"When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art."             Paul Cezanne

"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters."   Paul Gauguin