Quotes from Antoni Tapies

If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.

I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.

Art should startle the viewer into thinking about the meaning of life.

When I talk of reality, I am always thinking of essentials. Profundity is not located in some remote, inaccessible region. It is rooted in everyday life.

Sometimes people have the idea that art should be highly refined. But I always believed that one could make art out of simple, humble things. Small things can be transcendental. They can change our way of looking at the world. I think it's important to make art out of almost anything.

In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.

My illusion is to have something to transmit. If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.

The material presence of the work only serves as a conveyer launching an invitation to the observer to take part of the comprehensive game of the thousand and one emotions and visions.

The artist has to make the viewer understand that his world is too narrow, he has to open up to new perspectives.