Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon
Odilon Redonwas a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth20 April 1840
CountryFrance
running exercise next-day
I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.
awakening spirit surprise
I await joyous surprises while working, an awakening of the materials that I work with and that my spirit develops.
eye artist soul
The Artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena.
originality logic invisible
My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible.
artist yield spirit
The artist yields often to the stimuli of materials that will transmit his spirit.
artist ideas perfection
Artists who approach perfection do not have many ideas.
judging understanding impossible
It is difficult to judge one's contemporaries; perhaps it is impossible to understand them.
fashion law giving
All my originality consists?in giving life in human fashion to beings which are impossible according to the laws of possibility.
heart voice
I am repelled by those who voice the word 'nature', without having any trace of it in their hearts.
ideas clothes giving
The painter is not an intellectual if, when he has painted a nude woman, he gives us the idea that she is just about to put her clothes back on.
drawing inspire doe
My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.
feelings shadow
I have a feeling only for shadows
soul fundamentals masters
The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour.
doors stories littles
I have placed there a little door opening on to the mysterious. I have made stories.