Famous quotes by Sculptors

Discover the voices of sculptors whose work transforms raw material into form and feeling. These reflections range from classical traditions in marble and bronze to contemporary experiments in clay, steel, and found objects. Read how artists think about space and weight, surface and light, patience and risk, and the dialogue between hand, tool, and idea. Whether you are curious about the craft or interested in the creative mind, these quotations offer concise glimpses into the challenges, discipline, and wonder of shaping the three-dimensional world.

"What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

"You find me at work; excuse the dust on my blouse. I sculpt my marble myself"

Camille Claudel, Sculptor

"To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect"

Alexander Calder, Sculptor

"True strength is delicate"

Louise Berliawsky Nevelson, Sculptor

"To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"I paint with shapes"

Alexander Calder, Sculptor

"Boundaries are actually the main factor in space, just as the present, another boundary, is the main factor in time"

Eduardo Chillida, Sculptor

Small: Eduardo Chillida

"To know one thing, you must know the opposite"

Henry Moore, Sculptor

"Each work has its own space, which should neither be conceived as a sort of cage nor regarded as extending to infinity"

Marino Marini, Sculptor

"Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

"Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

"I would prefer to have a more appealing job. If I could still change careers, I would prefer it. This unfortunate art is made for long beards and ugly faces rather than for a relatively well-endowed woman"

Camille Claudel, Sculptor

"I invent nothing, I rediscover"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years"

John Fischer, Sculptor

"There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

"Architecture is inhabited sculpture"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

Small: Constantin Brancusi

"I tolerate my faults but not at all other people's"

Camille Claudel, Sculptor

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"Nobody does good to men with impunity"

Auguste Rodin, Sculptor

Small: Auguste Rodin

"Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life"

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

"What comes from oneself, is nearly from no one. There is only me as a link"

Eduardo Chillida, Sculptor

Small: Eduardo Chillida

"One can never know enough. The unknown and its call lies even in what we know"

Eduardo Chillida, Sculptor

Small: Eduardo Chillida

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