“In order to renew my art, to develop it, I need to systematically change my way of working from one work to another, and be free from all preconception of aesthetics… What matters is that it should be to the point… As for the way I reach that being to the point, I should say that the more it varies from one painting to the other, the more absurd the way leading to it seems to be in my view, the keener my interest in going through it… I confide in accidental progression, and cannot progress but from one accident to another. It is what I attempt to do, and it is a continual renewal, a truly continual one…”

Nicolas de Staël

(Renewal set as a principle ? No, it is not; it rather is a training to comply with reality –a reality which, day after day, is new)

(Translated by Michèle Bustros)