Jacoba van Heemskerck quotes

.. I am so often showing my work in Germany that I belong to the German moderns... I openly want to confess you that I don't value the new painting in my home country very much. That is why I don't have a lot of acquaintances among the painters. Everything here is so little progressive. People's life is to easy here. It is very difficult to keep wide-awake since all are sleeping here. I feel much more at home in Germany. (Jacoba van Heemskerck)
I was in Rotterdam, but the exhibition there was horrible. Le Fauconnier has nothing to tell anymore. He has a dirty color now and has become a real academic. Mondrian is completely frozen, no poetry at all anymore. It's terrible that these people can not reach further with great ideals. To my taste Alma paints far too much naturalistic. A big difference, these three, compared to [Franz] Marc, Kandinsky, Filla etc.. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
That's the way it goes, you know, I'm always dissatisfied and always I want to go on. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
As an artist you can not stand for long in The Netherlands. You must see a lot and talk a lot about everything.. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
Here [in the Netherlands] there is absolutely nothing, nowhere and permanently committees to deliver the visual artists some money, since all are hungry. It is such a difficult time for Holland. I had flu, I was very sick and I am still too weak to work. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
For you it must be a great satisfaction that you have done so much for modern art. If Der Sturm had not worked like this for ten years then Germany would not have been at the forefront of the movement. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
It is a terrible, but also tremendous time. Personally I find it moreover so important for my art to live now... These times force you to think over a lot and work very hard, in Nature now a strong creative force is working. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
The country [ Brittany ] is very beautiful and painterly one see stimulating color tones; but the more abstract one works, the more one transforms the sketch into combinations. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
Every day I am thinking about the Art school [which Walden wants to start in Germany, since 1915-16]... If our pursuit is really to make great progress in future, the Art school must produce individualities who can with our assist really continue from their inside and start creating on their own, without always studying the pictures of other artists. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
Once again I talked with some painters, but the modern artists [in The Netherlands ] write more than they paint. If you write about art in such a way and you want to paint always with a fixed plan, then you will lose completely the deep, glorious and spontaneous art. You always have to create the new from the very deep, inside. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
Again I only gave numbers [of her art-works, she sent for the next Sturm-exhibition]. I stick to my idea of not giving titles... Titles are really disgusting romantic, and now in a while people will have hundreds of Spring's, Summers, Trees [paintings], to Liebknecht, Eberts, etc.. Above everything color and line have their own specific language, which doesn't want to be captured in a title. (Jacoba van Heemskerck)
I work a lot and I think a lot. I really want to try to paint on glass.. Please will you ask him [mr. architect Taut ] if there are any transparent colors, which one can use to paint on the glass directly... I want to dispose of a new technique in which the artist can paint on the glass directly instead of canvas. When one wants to reach colors spiritually-bright, then a time will come that oil-paint and canvas are no longer suitable... So, if you have time, please ask Mr. Taut if he understands my view and maybe he knows the ways how I can follow my direction. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
Nothing special is happening here in the paintersworld [of the Netherlands]; everything stays firmly the same. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
This evening the Anthroposophical Society invited me to give a lecture about modern art, on 13 March. They start to wake up here [in the Netherlands]... Please, tell me something, what I should emphasize, what you find most important. I shall also read something from 'The Spiritual in Art' by Kandinsky... But we still have other views on the whole, isn't it. I don't always agree with Kandinsky, and often more with your views. So please write a little much... You know, for me it is always easier to paint my principles. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
I got the idea to paint people, in the way I see them. From one face I take to my own idea some very characteristic features of it and then I make of the whole a picture in colors and lines, in the way how I meet that person. The whole thing becomes not at all a portrait in the usual sense... I have tried to make types, but will built in more and more personal qualities and all that kind of things... Everything will be figured out fully abstract of course, it is just a personal feeling and no system at all. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
All men forget that colors have to radiate to give the big [spiritual] expression. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck
On the whole [the alignment of a series of stained glass windows with the interior of a villa in The Hague] I have thought about all the time... I want to focus more on the architecture of the interior in general and that should we do together [with architect Buys]... Now I was already thinking, the enormous color effect that the window will generate - and that will certainly become powerful - must be accompanied with strong colors - the hall -, otherwise the window itself will be too much isolated. For instance the staircase, could it be painted in strong colors and not [in] oak.... deep ultramarine blue or green, with a beautiful colorful carpet.... I feel I must make designs for carpets, to create in that way a beautiful unity with the stained glass as a whole. View quote
Jacoba van Heemskerck