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Could only have been painted by a madman.
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No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.
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By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does.
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it was the period I think of as the age of the pillow.. .What I wanted to bring out - is that which cannot be measured - I wanted to bring out the tired movement in the eyelids - the lips must look as though they are whispering - she must look as though she is breathing - I want life - what is alive. on his painting 'The sick Child'
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What is art really? The outcome of dissatisfaction with life, the point of impact for the creative force, the continual movement of life.. ..in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.
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No one in art has yet penetrated as far as Dostoyevsky into the mystical realms of the soul, towards the metaphysical, the subconsciousness, viewing the external reality of the world as merely a sign, a symbol of the spiritual and metaphysical.
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My ideas developed under the influence of the bohemians or rather under Hans Jager leader of the 'Kristiania Bohemia' since 1883. Many people have mistakenly claimed that my ideas were formed under the influence of Strindberg and the Germans.. ..but that is wrong. They had already been formed by then.
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I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.
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I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.
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There must be no more pictures covered in brown sauce c. 1880, when Munch started to paint series of landscapes in fresh colors
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I am at work on a girl. It is quite simple a girl getting up on the edge of her bed and pulling on her stockings. The bed is whitish, and in addition there are white sheets, a white nightdress, a bedside table with a white cover, white curtains and a blue wall. as model for his painting 'Morning', 1884
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From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
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My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ..my art gives meaning to my life.
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Far out there – that
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When seen as a whole, art derives from a person's desire to communicate himself to another. I do not believe in an art which is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart. All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart’s blood. Art is your heart’s blood.