Top 32 Quotes & Sayings by Pierre Bonnard

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French artist Pierre Bonnard.

Last updated on December 19, 2024.

Pierre Bonnard was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis, his early work was strongly influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, as well as the prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists. Bonnard was a leading figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism. He painted landscapes, urban scenes, portraits and intimate domestic scenes, where the backgrounds, colors and painting style usually took precedence over the subject.

French - Artist | October 3, 1867 - January 23, 1947

Source: Wikipedia

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

Pierre Bonnard

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

Pierre Bonnard

I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly.

Pierre Bonnard

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Pierre Bonnard

One always talks of surrendering to nature. There is also such a thing as surrendering to the picture.

Pierre Bonnard

The important thing is to remember what most impressed you and to put it on canvas as fast as possible.

Pierre Bonnard

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Pierre Bonnard

It is still color, it is not yet light.

Pierre Bonnard

You reason color more than you reason drawing... Color has a logic as severe as form.

Pierre Bonnard

Art will never be able to exist without nature.

Pierre Bonnard

Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole.

Pierre Bonnard

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.

Pierre Bonnard

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.

Pierre Bonnard

When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough.

Pierre Bonnard

What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance.

Pierre Bonnard

The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works. (On being photographed)

Pierre Bonnard

How many days have I spent alone with my cat... and when I say alone, I mean without a material being, for my cat is a mystical companion, a spirit.

Pierre Bonnard

Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason.

Pierre Bonnard

One does not always sing out of happiness.

Pierre Bonnard

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.

Pierre Bonnard

The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world... the picture... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him.

Pierre Bonnard

Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.

Pierre Bonnard

And after drawing comes composition. A well-composed painting is half done

Pierre Bonnard

It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting.

Pierre Bonnard

What attracted me was less art itself than the artist’s life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life.

Pierre Bonnard

The painter's only solid ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged.

Pierre Bonnard

The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object.

Pierre Bonnard

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

Pierre Bonnard

You reason colour more than you reason drawing Colour has a logic as severe as form.

Pierre Bonnard

It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values.

Pierre Bonnard

Art is not nature... There was a lot more to be got out of color.

Pierre Bonnard

Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings.

Pierre Bonnard

Top 32 Quotes & Sayings by Pierre Bonnard

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