“I have just finished one painting and am already at work on the preliminary drawings for the next one. I must do something in order to get rid of such habits or I won't manage to find time for any vacation. I have had this new painting in my mind since January, and must get it down on canvas.”

— Wassily Kandinsky

Quote from his letter to Freundlich, 15 July 15, 1938; as cited in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 27
1930 - 1944

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Wassily Kandinsky 68

Russian painter 1866–1944

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1958
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

“In the coming year I must do a large painting which will definitely get me recognized for what I truly am, for I want all or nothing. All those little paintings are not the only thing that I can do... I want to do large-scale painting. One thing is certain, that within five years, I must have a name in Paris; that is what I strive for. It's hard to get there, I know... To move faster I only lack one thing, and that's money, in order to boldly execute what I have in mind.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from his letter (10 March 1845); as cited in 'Gustave Courbet', by Georges Riat, Parkstone International, 2015
very soon after this letter Courbet attacked a canvas of eight feet high and ten feet wide
1840s - 1850s

“I don't like that word 'finish'. When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while. I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often. The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

quote of 1948
1942 - 1948
Source: Movements in art since 1945, Edward Lucie-Smith, Thames and Hudson 1975, p 32

“I always get into arguments, with people who want to retain the old values in painting — the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object..”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quotes, 1960 - 1970
Source: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=XUoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49, Vol. 64, nr. 3, 19 January 1968, p. 49

“I usually let them [his drawings] lies around for a long time. I have to get to really like it. And then when I do the painting I have to get to like that too. Sometimes I stay with the sketch, sometimes I follow the original idea exactly if the idea is solved. But most of the time there have to be adjustments during the painting. Through the painting of it I find the color and I work the form and play with it and it adjusts itself.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

In an interview by Henry Geldzahler, 'Art International 1.', February 1964, p. 48
1950 - 1968

“It is the bareness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers. At times it seems enough to draw, without the distractions of color and mass. Yet it is an old ambition to make drawing and painting one. Usually I draw in relation to my painting, what I am working on at the time. On a lucky day a surprising balance of forms and spaces will appear and I feel the drawing making itself, the image taking hold. This in turn moves me towards painting -anxious to get to the same place, with the actuality of paint and light.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 73-75

“I am most anxious to get into my London painting-room, for I do not consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas. I have done a good deal of skying for I am determined to conquer all difficulties, and that among the rest.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 41
1820s

“As far as my work concerned, I am busy with a few small paintings, one is ordered and the other I have to 'adventure'. More and more I feel that I am short of so many studies, if I had the money, I didn't make any painting next year, I would only study [sketches]; but well, you have to make the best of a bad job, it will be hard enough to enable myself a living.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Wat mijn werk betreft zit ik aan enige kleine schilderijtjes, een is mij besteld en die andere moet ik avonturen. Ik voel hoe langer hoe langs hoe meer dat ik zooveel studie te kort kom, als ik geld had schilderde ik in het eerste jaar geen schilderij en studeer ik [schetsen], maar enfin je moet eens door een zure appel heenbijten, het zal mij moeite genoeg kosten om te kunnen leven.
Quote of Mauve, in a letter to Willem Maris, from Oosterbeek, 1864; as cited in Anton Mauve 1838 - 1888, exhibition catalog of Teylers Museum, Haarlem / Laren, Singer, ed. De Bodt en Plomp, 2009, p. 133
1860's

“I am biased towards the belief that every painter must be grounded in strong and faultless drawing skills, and until one has not experimented with all styles of painting and has not comprehended their potentialities one's work is not complete. Even an abstract painter must know how to draw as well as a figurative artist. As for me, drawing has never created any problem, since I know how to draw anatomy correctly if I had to, I understand the function of muscle groups and sculpture.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Source: Ayandegan (1973), p. 4

“I painted like that because I wanted to get through to something new - a kind of painting that was my own.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

quote from Seurat, John Russell; Thames & Hudson, London 1965 ISBN 0-500-20032-7
undated quotes

“I have just finished one painting and am already at work on the preliminary drawings for the next one. I must do something in order to get rid of such habits or I won't manage to find time for any vacation. I have had this new painting in my mind since January, and must get it down on canvas.”

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Wassily Kandinsky 68

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