I Hope To Live All My Life

Beauty Lies In Nature And Reveals, Once The Artist Has Perceived It, Its Own Expressive Power.

It Is Fatal For Art If It Is Forced Into Official Respectability And Condemned To Sterile Mediocrity.

I Have Studied The Art Of The Masters And The Art Of The Moderns, Avoiding Any Preconceived System And Without Prejudice. I Have No More Wanted To Imitate The Former Than To Copy The Latter; Nor Have I Thought Of Achieving The Idle Aim Of Art For Art's Sake.

I Hope To Live All My Life For My Art, Without Abandoning My Principles One Iota, Without . . . Having Painted As Much As You Can Cover With Your Hand, To Please Somebody Or In Order To Sell The Picture More Easily.

Painting Is An Essentially Concrete Art And Can Only Consist Of The Representation Of Real And Existing Things. It Is A Completely Physical Language, The Words Of Which Consist Of All Visible Objects. An Object Which Is Abstract, Not Visible, Non-existent, Is Not Within The Realm Of Painting.