"The realistic value of a work is completely independent of its properties in terms of content."

"Man needs colour to live; it's just as necessary an element as fire and water."

"Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power."

"This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting."

"What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing."