A Quote by Piet Mondrian

I began as a naturalistic painter. Very quickly I felt the urgent need for a more concise form of expression and an economy of means. I never stopped progressing toward abstraction.

Piet Mondrian

Quote Topics

Abstraction Began Concise Economy Expression Felt Form Means More Need Never Never Stop Painter Progressing Quickly Stopped Toward Urgent Very

Quote Author

Piet Mondrian
Dutch - Artist
March 7, 1872 - February 1, 1944

Painter after painter, since the beginning of the century, has tended toward abstraction. First, the Impressionists simplified the landscape in terms of color, and then the Fauves simplified it again by adding distortion, which, for some reason, is a characteristic of our century.

Marcel Duchamp

There's always a joy in newness as a painter, and in sub-Saharan Africa, I encountered different realities with regard to light and how it bounces across the skin. The way that blues and purples come into play. In India and Sri Lanka, it was no different. It became a moment in which I had an opportunity to learn as a painter how to create the body in full form, and that's a very material and aesthetic thing. This is not conceptual. It's all an abstraction.

Kehinde Wiley

During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.

Marie Curie

When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.

Christine and the Queens

As a journalist you have to think quickly, you're exposed to all types of people and situations and you've got to synthesize your thoughts in a very clear and concise way and write them down quickly. Those were all things that have proven really useful in my life as a television writer.

Frank Spotnitz

Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.

Max Planck

So I very quickly stopped almost all decoration. I was interested in the three-dimensional form of the pots, but my decoration was nonexistent.

Warren MacKenzie

Technique should be taught, not as an end in itself, but as something related to individual expression, as a means toward an end. One cannot separate technique from expression. There is only expression.

Kimon Nicolaides

I got into pastoring because of the art form. I started a church, but I felt the art form needed to be freed for all people. A particular religion over others was never interesting to me. I wanted to talk to people about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.

Rob Bell

Abstract art was the quivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words,but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.

Etel Adnan

The need for a global structure of control in the form of a world environment court is now more urgent than ever before.

Judi Dench

We need more concept-development and active involvement, less tuning forks, pulleys, and friction formulas - students know they'll never use those. They need more study of outer space and DNA. They need more exciting teaching, more fair-minded encouragement, more career guidance, more mentorship. Both students and teachers need more feedback. It would help if we stopped protecting bad teachers - It's very difficult to get rid of even sexual perverts let alone just bad teachers.

Michio Kaku

This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour.

Piet Mondrian

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

Paul Cezanne

I truly, genuinely like clothes. Making them is an art form, and wearing them is a form of self-expression. I find it very emotional because I can remember moments in my life - my mood, how I felt - through these clothes.