Artists

Visionaries who redefined what art could be.

26 entries

Agnes Martin

Canadian-American · 1912–2004

“The value of art is in the observer. When you find out what you like, you're really finding out about yourself.”

Andy Warhol

American · 1928–1987

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Banksy

British · 1974–

“A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.”

Claude Monet

French · 1840–1926

“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

Edward Hopper

American · 1882–1967

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist.”

Frida Kahlo

Mexican · 1907–1954

“Pies, ¿para qué los quiero si tengo alas pa' volar?”

“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”

Georgia O'Keeffe

American · 1887–1986

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time.”

Gustav Klimt

Austrian · 1862–1918

“All art is erotic.”

Henri Matisse

French · 1869–1954

“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat

American · 1960–1988

“I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.”

Katsushika Hokusai

Japanese · 1760–1849

“六才にして物の形状を写すの癖ありて”

“From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the forms of things. By the time I was fifty I had published an infinity of designs, but all I produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account.”

Keith Haring

American · 1958–1990

“Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.”

Leonardo da Vinci

Italian · 1452–1519

“Il più nobile piacere è la gioia di comprendere.”

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”

Louise Bourgeois

French-American · 1911–2010

“Art is a guarantee of sanity.”

Marcel Duchamp

French-American · 1887–1968

“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”

Marina Abramović

Serbian · 1946–

“The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing.”

Mark Rothko

American (Latvian-born) · 1903–1970

“I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

Michelangelo

Italian · 1475–1564

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

Pablo Picasso

Spanish · 1881–1973

“L'art est un mensonge qui nous fait comprendre la vérité.”

“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”

Paul Klee

Swiss-German · 1879–1940

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”

Rembrandt van Rijn

Dutch · 1606–1669

“Choose only one master—Nature.”

René Magritte

Belgian · 1898–1967

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”

Salvador Dalí

Spanish · 1904–1989

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch · 1853–1890

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

Wassily Kandinsky

Russian · 1866–1944

“Color is a power which directly influences the soul.”

Yayoi Kusama

Japanese · 1929–

“Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment.”