“I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.”

Certainly a chair can be just as interesting as a human being. But first the chair must be perceived by a human being… You should not paint the chair, but only what someone has felt about it.

In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.

In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in Hell hanging over my head.

I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.

Oil-painting is a developed technique. Why go backwards?

I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.

Anybody who perceives colors can become a painter. It’s simply a question of whether or not one has felt anything and whether one has the courage to recount the things one has felt.

The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.

Some colors reconcile themselves to one another, others just clash.

My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was 50. I had the strength for new deeds and ideas.

I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.

All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart’s blood. Art is your heart’s blood.

The way one sees is also dependent upon one’s emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have.

A work of art comes only from inside a human being.