Best 90 quotes of Paul Klee on MyQuotes

A certain fire pretends to be alive; it awakens. Working its way along the hand as a conductor, it reaches the support and engulfs it; then a leaping spark closes the circle it was to trace, coming back to the eye and beyond.

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

A line comes into being. It goes out for a walk, so to speak, aimlessly for the sake of the walk.

All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist.

All is well with me. The rain doesn't reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There's no shortage of work, either.

All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!

...A long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color.

An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk's sake.

Art does not reflect what is seen, rather it makes the hidden visible.

Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.

Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view.

A tendency toward the abstract is inherent in linear expression: graphic imagery being confined to outlines has a fairy-like quality and at the same time can achieve great precision.

Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.

Becoming is superior to being.

Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal.

By using patches of color and tone it is possible to capture every natural impression in the simplest way, freshly and immediately.

Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age.

Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of all time and space call it brain or heart of creation activates every function, who is the artist who would not dwell there?

Color and I are one. I am a painter.

Color has got me. I no longer need to chase after it. It has got me for ever. I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour.

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.

Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment

Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.

Each energy calls for its complementary energy to achieve self-contained stability based on the play of energies.

Every artist would like to live in the central organ of creation... Not all are destined to get there... but our beating hearts drive us deep down, right into the pit of creation.

Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.

First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.

For the understanding of a picture a chair is needed. Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind

Frightened, I jump up from the bank, the struggle begins anew. Bitterness has returned. I am not Pan in the reed, I am merely a human being and want to climb a few steps, but really climb them.

From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him.

Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political - satirical - conceits expressed in one figure or a few.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.

I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough.

I have a clear view of 12 years of history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the reemergence of a self without blinkers.

I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute.

In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me; at such times I am annihilated, but at peace. This would be fine for old people but I... I am my life's debtor, for I have given promises.

In earlier times artists liked to show what was actually visible... nowadays we are concerned with reality, rather than the merely visible.

In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.

It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.

It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.

It is possible that a picture will move far away from Nature and yet find its way back to reality. The faculty of memory, experience at a distance produces pictorial associations.

It is the artistic mission to penetrate as far as may be toward that secret ground where primal law feeds growth.

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about Europe.

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing. Then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil will be able to hold without technique.

I want to be as though newborn. To be almost primitive.

Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar. Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible.

Light and the rational forms are locked in combat; light sets them into motion, bends what is straight, makes parallels oval, inscribes circles in the intervals, makes the intervals active.