Concerning the Spiritual in Art Quotes

“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.”
― Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The artist must be blind to distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Art becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work.

Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“That is beautiful which springs from inner need, which springs from the soul”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“(...) an inner feeling called "Stimmung" by the germans and best translated as sentiment (it is to be regreted that this word, sentiment, which is meant to describe the poetical efforts of an artist living soul, has been misused and finally, ridiculed. Was there ever a great word that the masses did not try immediatly to cheapen and desecrate?) (...)”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“La intuición con la que nace el artistas es el talento evangélico que no debe enterrar. El artista que no utiliza sus dotes es un esclavo perezoso.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“La belleza interior es la que se emplea por una necesidad interior imperiosa, renunciando a la belleza habitual. Naturalmente, parece fea al que no está acostumbrado a ella, ya que el ser humano en general tiende a lo externo y no está dispuesto a reconocer la necesidad interior (¡especialmente hoy!)”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst: Jedes Kunstwerk ist Kind seiner Zeit, oft ist es Mutter unserer Gefühle

“Cada cuadro encierra misteriosamente toda una vida, toda una vida con muchos sufrimientos, dudas, horas de entusiasmo y de luz. ¿Hacia dónde clama el alma del artista, si también participó en la creación? ¿Qué proclama? «Enviar luz a las profundidades del corazón humano es la misión del artista», dice Schumann. «El pintor es un hombre que sabe dibujar y pintar todo», dice Tolstoi.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular [An Updated Version of the Sadleir Translation]

“That the analogy contains a grain of truth does not make it the less mischievous.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Real spiritual gains are at best under-valued, at worst entirely ignored.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Sienkiewicz, in one of his novels, compares the spiritual life to swimming; for the man who does not strive tirelessly, who does not fight continually against sinking, will mentally and morally go under.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“At the apex of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and insulted.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“When one stage has been accomplished, and many evil stones cleared from the road, some unseen and wicked hand scatters new obstacles in the way, so that the path often seems blocked and totally obliterated. But there never fails to come to the rescue some human being, like ourselves in everything except that he has in him a secret power of vision.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The other art, that which is capable of educating further, springs equally from contemporary feeling, but is at the same time not only echo and mirror of it, but also has a deep and powerful prophetic strength.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing. This condition of art is called "art for art's sake." This neglect of inner meanings, which is the life of colours, this vain squandering of artistic power is called "art for art's sake.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“To send light into the darkness of men's hearts—such is the duty of the artist," said Schumann. "An artist is a man who can draw and paint everything," said Tolstoi.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“The way to the supernatural lies through the natural.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Comprender es formar y aproximar al espectador al punto de vista del artista. Ya dijimos que el arte es hijo de su tiempo. Un arte así sólo puede repetir artísticamente lo que está reflejando nítidamente la atmósfera del momento. Este arte, que no guarda ningún germen del futuro, que es sólo hijo de su tiempo y que nunca crecerá hasta ser engendrador de futuro, es un arte castrado. Tiene escasa duración y moralmente muere en el instante en que desaparece la atmósfera que lo ha originado. El otro arte, capaz de evolucionar, se basa también en su época espiritual, pero no sólo es eco y espejo de ella, sino que contiene una energía profética vivificadora que actúa amplia y profundamente.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, De lo espiritual en el arte

“Cualquier creación artística es hija de su tiempo y, la mayoría de las veces, madre de nuestros propios sentimientos. Igualmente, cada periodo cultural produce un arte que le es propio y que no puede repetirse. Pretender revivir principios artísticos del pasado puede dar como resultado, en el mejor de los casos, obras de arte que sean como un niño muerto antes de nacer. Por ejemplo, es totalmente imposible sentir y vivir interiormente como lo hacían los antiguos griegos.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, De lo espiritual en el arte

“It has been said above that art is the child of its age. Such an art can only create an artistic feeling which is already clearly felt. This art, which has no power for the future, which is only a child of the age and cannot become a mother of the future, is a barren art. She is transitory and to all intent dies the moment the atmosphere alters which nourished her.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art