Piet Mondrian Quotes

Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.

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

The more basic the color, the more inward, the more pure.

Vertical and horizontal lines are the expression of two opposing forces; they exist everywhere and dominate everything; their reciprocal action constitutes 'life'. I recognized that the equilibrium of any particular aspect of nature rests on the equivalence of its opposites.

Intellect confuses intuition.

The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.

Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.

The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore, the object must be eliminated from the picture.

I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects.

I don't want pictures, I want to find things out.

Curves are so emotional.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

It is a task of art to express clear vision of reality.

It is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.

Everything is expressed through RELATIONSHIPS.

The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty.

To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.

Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind?

I, too, find the flower beautiful in its outward appearance. But a deeper beauty lies concealed within.

The relation of color and the relation of proportion are both based on the relation of position.

The essence of painting has actually always been to make it [the universal] plastically perceptible through colour and line.

The only problem in art is to achieve a balance between the subjective and the objective.

Observing sea, sky and stars, I sought to indicate their plastic function through a multiplicity of crossing verticals and horizontals. Impressed by the vastness of Nature, I was trying to express its expansion, rest and unity.

By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.

I think you too recognize the important relationship between philosophy and art, and it is just this relationship that most painters deny. The great masters do grasp it, unconsciously; but I believe that a painter's conscious spiritual knowledge will have a much greater influence upon his art, and that it would be due only to a weakness in him, or lack of genius, should this spiritual knowledge be harmful to his art.