Francisco Goya Quotes

Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain.

The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature.

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man.

As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.

The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.

Who is able to paint the existence of a dog as Picasso paints the existence of a cubic shape?

A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

I have a studio in the country - in the woods - but my paintings look more real to me than what is outdoors. You walk outside; the rocks are inert; even the clouds are inert. It makes me feel a little better. But I do have a faith that it is possible to make a living thing, not a diagram of what I have been thinking: to posit with paint something living, something that changes each day.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

Even in front of nature one must compose.

If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.

It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

(Art is) the residue of vision.

Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy. Easy? Of course - you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands. I never met him. Who? Everybody. Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting? I am. Pardon me? I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational. Not all painting. No: housepainting is representational. And what does a housepainter represent? Ten dollars an hour. In other words, you don't want to be serious - It takes two to be serious.

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.