Maurice Denis quotes

Maurice Denis was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer associated with the Symbolist and Nabi movements. Renowned for his lyrical style and emphasis on the spiritual aspects of art, he played a pivotal role in modern art’s development. He influenced generations of artists through both his works and his writings on aesthetics. Here are 20 of his quotes:

Don't lose sight of the essential objectives of painting, which are expression, emotion, delectation; to understand the means, to paint decoratively, to exalt form and color.

Maurice Denis

.. the classical aesthetic offers us at the same time a method of thinking and a method of wanting to be, a moral and at the same time a psychology... The classical tradition as a whole, by the logic of the effort and the greatness of results, is in some way parallel with the religious tradition of humanity.

Maurice Denis

.. Every work of art is a transposition, a caricature, the passionate equivalent of a sensation received.

Maurice Denis

All artists are now free to express their own personality.

Maurice Denis

Art is when things appear rounded.

Maurice Denis

All that is necessary to paint well is to be sincere.

Maurice Denis

The sublime is to approach the subject or wall with an attitude that is grand, noble, and in no way petty..

Maurice Denis

Art remains a sure refuge, the hope of a reason in life from now on, and the consoling thought that little beauty manifests itself in our lives, and that we are continuing the work of Creation... Therefore the work of art has merit, inscribed in the marvelous beauty of flowers, of light, in the proportion of trees and shape of waves, and the perfection of faces; to inscribe our poor and lamentable life of suffering, of hope and of thought.

Maurice Denis

The common error of us all [in late Impressionism] was to search above all for the light. It would have been better first to search for the Kingdom of God and his justice, that is to say for the expression of our spirit in beauty, and the rest would have arrived naturally.

Maurice Denis

Decorative and edifying. That is what I want art to be before anything else.

Maurice Denis

What amazement, followed by what a revelation! In place of windows opening on nature, like the impressionists, these were surfaces which were solidly decorative, powerfully colorful, bordered with brutal strokes, partitioned.

Maurice Denis

To synthesize is not necessarily to simplify in the sense of suppressing certain parts of the object: it is to simplify in the sense of rendering intelligible. It is, in short, to put in hierarchic order: to set each picture to a single rhythm, to a dominant; it is sacrifice, to subordinate - to generalize.

Maurice Denis

I believe that art should sanctify nature.

Maurice Denis

Art is no longer a purely visual experience.... it is a work of our intellect triggered by nature.... the imagination again become the queen of our strengths and we liberate our sensitivity.

Maurice Denis

Painting is first of all the art of imitation, and not the servant of some imaginary 'purity.

Maurice Denis

Art is no longer a visual sensation that we gather, like a photograph, as it were, of nature. No, it is a creation of our spirit, for which nature is only the occasion.

Maurice Denis

Art is the sanctification of the nature, of that nature found in everyone who is content to live.

Maurice Denis

The profoundness of our emotions comes from the sufficiency of these lines and these colors to explain themselves.... everything is contained in the beauty of the work.

Maurice Denis