“The artist's studio will be like a glass-bell or a hollow crystal. The painter himself must be white, which is to say, without tragedy or sorrow. The pallet must be of glass; the brush must be square and hard, dust-free and as immaculate as a surgical instrument. Doubtless there is much to learn from a medical laboratory... The studio of the modern painter must reflect the ambiance of mountains which are nine thousand feet high and topped with a eternal cap of snow. There the cold kills the microbes.”
Quote in Van Doesburg's article 'Elementarism', as cited in De Stijl – Van Doesburg Issue, January 1932, pp. 17–19
1926 – 1931
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Theo van Doesburg 46
Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer 1883–1931Related quotes
Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
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Discourse no. 6, delivered on December 10, 1774; vol. 1, p. 150.
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Context: You must be painter who takes a canvas and does what he likes with it. We are more like painters in past centuries who were ordered to paint frescoes to specific measurements. Among the people in the fresco may be a bishop, the prince's wife, etc. The fresco isn't bad simply because the painter used for models people from the court of the prince who ordered and paid for it.
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Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 14
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914
“192. Whose house is of glasse must not throw stones at another.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 238
1940s
A Mathematician's Apology (1941)