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Caspar David Friedrich
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„Gently rising hills block the view into the distance; line the wishes and desires of the children, who enjoy the blissful moments of the present without wanting to know what lies beyond. Bushes in bloom, nourishing herbs, and sweet-smelling flowers surround the quiet clear stream in which the pure blue of the cloudless sky is reflected like the glorious image of God in the souls of the children… There is no stone to be seen here, no withered branch, no fallen leaves. The whole of nature breathes, peace, joy, innocence and life.“
„Through the gloomy clouds break / Blue sky, sunshine, / On the heights and in the valley / Sing the lark and the nightingaleGod, I thank you that I live / Not forever in this world / Strengthen me that my soul rise / Upward toward your firmament.“
„Just as the reverent man prays without uttering words, and the Lord hears him, the sensitive painter paints, and the sensitive man understands and recognizes him, but even the more obtuse carry away something from his work.“
„Every truthful work of art must express a definite feeling, must move the spirit of the spectator either to joy or to sadness…. rather than try to unite all sensations, as thought mixed together with a twirling stick.“
„What pleases us about the older paintings is above all their pious simplicity… However, we do not want to become simple as many have done, but rather become pious and imitate their virtues.“
„I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. Solitude is indispensible for my dialogue with nature.“
„Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye.“
„The divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand“
„All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it.“
„A picture must not be invented but felt. Observe the form exactly, both the smallest and the large and do not separate the small from the large, but rather the trivial from the important.“
„The artist’s feeling is his law. Genuine feeling can never be contrary to nature; it is always in harmony with her. But another person’s feelings should never be imposed on us as law. Spiritual affinity leads to similarity in work, but such affinity is something entirely different from mimicry. Whatever people may say of Y’s paintings and how they often resemble Z’s, yet they proceed from Y and are his sole property.“
„Why, the question is often asked of meDo you choose as subjects for paintingSo often death, perishing and the grave?In order to one day live eternallyOne must often submit oneself to death.“
„You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.“
„It is doubtful whether the artist [unknown] altogether knew what he depicted here in this panel, and even more doubtful whether he could have expressed it in words. That which we praise here as well thought-out and cleverly arranged may, in fact, have been achieved by him unconsciously; for the artist was transformed by pure harmoniousness while executing this picture, and his feeling become his law. Only his disposition, his spiritual exaltation, could have brought forth such a fruit as this picture. Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feeling paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it; while even the less sensitive gain some inkling of it.“
„.. the great white blanket of snow [in one of his painting of Cemetery / Church in the Snow, mid-1820’s]…. the essence of the utmost purity, beneath which nature prepares herself for a new life..“
„What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.“
„Alas, the blue arc of heaven / Is covered with gloomy clouds, / And the bright radiance of the sun / Is completely hiddenSee the terrifying force of the tempest / Bows the oaks so that is groans, / And the rose on the beautiful pasture / has ben bent down by the rain.“
„You should keep sacred every impuls of your mind; you should keep sacred every pious sentiment; because that is art in us. In an inspired hour she will appear in a clear form, and this form will be your picture.“
„Sometimes I try to think and nothing comes out of it; but it happens that I doze off and suddenly feel as though someone is rousing me. I am startled, open my eyes, and what my mind was looking for stands before me like an apparition – at once I seize my pencil to draw; the main thing has been done.“
„To many it is incomprehensible that art has to emerge from a person’s inner being, ‘that it has to do with one’s morality, one’s religion..’. But so it does. You should trade only in what you recognize to be true and beautiful, noble and good in your soul.“
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