Top 17 Quotes & Sayings by Pierre Soulages

For me, it's important to experience aesthetic shock, which sets in motion our imagination, our emotions, our feelings, and our thoughts. That's the purpose of a painting and of art in general.

I realized that most people waste their lives earning a living, and I wanted to live. I love painting, so I keep painting. That's how I became an artist.

Painting isn't just pretty or pleasant; it is something that helps you to stand alone and face yourself.

It's what I do that teaches me what I'm looking for.

I never want to stop painting. I'm 94 now. What's my secret? I just keep thinking about the painting I'm going to do tomorrow.

I always loved to paint. As a kid, I liked to dip my paintbrush in black ink. They gave colors to me to use, but I didn't like them very much.

Painting is a play of opacities and transparencies.

I've always loved black, and I realized that, from the beginning, man went into completely dark caves to paint. They painted with black too. They could have painted with white because there were white stones all over the ground, but no, they chose to paint with black in the dark.

Black ink was always my favorite. I loved it. And then one day I realized that the only thing I ever wanted to do was to paint.

I am against limitations like perspective. Perspective is illusion, it's the opposite of presence, and art is presence.

I always liked paintings to be walls rather than windows. When we see a painting on a wall, it's a window, so I often put my paintings in the middle of the space to make a wall.

It's fascinating to think that as soon as man came into existence, he started painting.

If painting doesn't offer a way to dream and create emotions, then it's not worth it.

Prehistoric art came to move me much more than Greek art. Greek art has beautiful women and handsome men, but I don't care.

Painting allows us to live in a more interesting way than we live our everyday lives.

A window looks outside, but a painting should do the opposite - it should look inside of us. When I put them in the middle of the room, I attach the paintings at the top to the ceiling and on the bottom to the floor. I prefer this to just hanging them from the ceiling because it creates a place in a space, like a wall.

At 16, I decided to do something brave: I went on a prehistoric dig. In fact, I've had my name in a museum since I was 18 years old, not for my painting but for the prehistoric objects I found. That's how I started thinking about art.