Theo van Doesburg Quotes

We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a surface.

The square is to us what the cross was to the early Christians.

Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything, that is, the spiritual.

Art as language....in the future there will only be art. This common language will carry the message of love.

To be oneself is being neither under bond nor borrowed nor sold nor hired. To be, means to be spiritually free.

Our time has produced a need for contrast. This has been achieved not only in the external appearance of plastic expressions of coulor and matter, but also, and chiefly, in the tempo of life and in the techniques related to the daily, mechanical functions of life; namely standing, walking, driving, to lying and sitting - in short, every action which determines the content of architecture.

In place of the dream, the future will put art on a scientific and technical basis.

he line has almost become a work of art in itself; one can not play with it when the representation of objects perceived was all-important.

There is an old and a new consciousness of the age. The old one is directed towards the individual. The new one is directed towards the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal may be seen both in the world war and in modern art.

In all these products, whether iron bridges, locomotives, automobiles, telescopes, cottages, airport-hangars, funicular railways, skyscrapers, or children's toys, the will towards a new style expresses itself. The similarity of these examples to the new creations in art consists in the same striving for clear, pure form which expresses truth in the objects.

The complete and definitive work of art is created beyond one's individuality... ...The universal transcends such a level. Mere spontaneity has never created a work of art which possesses a lasting cultural value. The method leading to universal form is based upon calculations of measure and number.

While the expressive possibilities of Neoplasticism are limited to two dimensions (the plane), Elementarism realizes the possibility of plasticism in four dimensions, in the field of time-space.

...every machine is the spiritualization of an organism.

When contemplating a work of art it is possible to perceive if it has been created according to the eye or to the spirit, in other words, if it projects three-dimensional reality or spiritual n-dimensionality.

For - to say a few words on technique - whereas the curved line was used predominantly for reasons of beauty, (Phidias, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens) it has been used more and more economically for reasons of truth (Millet, Monet, Paul Cézanne) until it will end as the straight line for reasons of Love. This will enable the art of the future to create an international form; a form understandable to all and vital enough to the expression of a general feeling of love in a monumental way. Such is the future.