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Paula Modersohn-Becker Quotes
1876–1907 Germany
Paula Modersohn-Becker (February 8, 1876 - November 21, 1907) was a German painter in Worpswede and one of the most important representatives of early German Expressionism. She frequently stayed in Paris and saw the work of modern artists there, like paintings of Cézanne and early Henri Matisse's.
Random Paula Modersohn-Becker quote
17 quotes
..to have all colors deeper, more intense; |I| get quite angry at this lightness..
The intensity with which a subject is grasped (still life's, portraits, or creations of the imagination) – that is what makes for beauty in art.
I feel a burning desire to become grand in simplicity.
How happy I would be if I could give figurative expression to the unconscious feeling that often murmurs so softly and sweetly within me.
In her Diary (1898)
I would like to go to Paris for a week. Fifty-six Cezannes are being shown there!
Now it's almost as beautiful as Christmas [then Paula suddenly fell to the floor].. ..What a pity! [her last words].
Last year I wrote: 'the intensity with which a subject is grasped, that is what makes for beauty in art'. Isn't it also true for love?
We cleave to the past too much in Germany. All of our German art is too bogged down in the conventional.. .I think more highly of a free person who consciously puts convention aside.
I want to go further and further. I can hardly wait until I am a real artist. And then I long so for life. I've only begun to get a little taste of it.
I cannot come back to you. Not yet.. .I do not yet want to have a child by you. I must wait, if it comes again, or if something else comes out of it..
Is it true that all I ever write you about is painting and nothing else? Isn't there love in my lines to you and between the lines, shining and glowing and quiet and loving, the way a woman should love and the way your woman loves you?
I want to give colors intoxication, fullness, excitement, power. By trying to forget Impressionism, I wanted to conquer it. In the process I was conquered. We must work with assimilated, digested Impressionism.
Ingo F. Walther (2000)
I want the to give colors intoxication, fullness, excitement, power. By trying to forget Impressionism, I wanted to conquer it. In the process I was conquered. We must work with assimilated, digested Impressionism.
Recently I have felt just what the mood of colors means to me: it means that everything in this picture changes its local color according to the same principle and that thereby all muted tones blend in a unified relationship, one to the other.
I really see nothing of other people. I'm trying to dig my way back again into my work. One absolutely has to dedicate oneself, every bit of oneself, to the one inescapable thing. That's the only way to get somewhere and to become something.
My blonde was here again today. This time with her little boy at her breast. I had to draw her as a mother, had to. That is her single true purpose. Marvelous, these gleaming white breasts in her fiery red blouse. The whole thing is so grand in its shape and color..
As I was painting today, some thoughts came to me and I want to write them down for the people I love. I know that I shall not live very long. But I wonder, is that sad? Is a celebration more beautiful because it lasts longer? And my life is a celebration, a short, intense celebration.
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