#life

"..you could call absolute counterparts. Outwardly they are of course both abstract, of course, but I hate such a view on their art. I find it superficial to consider them like that from the very start. Their life and character is also completely different. Van der Leck lives as a peasant and lives a domestic life. Either one is abstract in his soul, or he isn't. Van der Leck is a real realist. Mondrian has always been away from the world, he is a romantic ascetic, a sophisticated monk. Van der Leck is really nice , but he is certainly not sophisticated .."

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“..a painted or drawn portrait should look more alike than a photo. A photo only presents the moment itself, but in a well-painted portrait you can recognize somebody in all his expressions. Every day you have to be able to see something else in it.”

“If you really want to give yourself as a woman ànd as a mother - completely - it is not possible to make your own creative work. That is, of course, a struggle. Being a mother is also creating, daily - even when children are grown-up - but I have always been able to connect it with my work; I have the children involved in it.. .... ..Yes indeed, certainly because there is also something of creation in it, and because I love the driving force that generates from the new, young around you. With a child you experience the whole life in a concise way, that is something so beautiful and so pure.”

“Later, when F. was more and more from home, I painted more and more, my own individual life - also saving my nerves .”

“biographical notes of Charley Toorop, in Dutch RKD-Archive, The Hague”

“some pictures of her paintings: on the website of Museum of Modern Realism”

“I know very well that Communism is the only power that will be able to cope with the ever-growing fascism and the increasing power of the Roman Catholics, and that therefore we all have to cooperate, but I can't now; once I am recovered you can count on me.. .I believe in Russia and Russian communism and from here and also through it a new life form and also a religious form of existence. I am a great admirer of Berdyaev.”