SERGE POLIAKOFF (1900-1969)

‘Similarly with your forms: the spontaneous form for an artist to use is always an organic one, but you’ve got to be in control of it. A child will use all the colours in the box at once, instinctively, and if you don’t want to make that same mistake you’ve got to on studying hard and for a long time. There is no such a thing as a system of pictorial construction, but there are certain universal laws that you can find out for yourself if you study the big masters long enough. It’s the law, not the ‘system’, that counts’
(S. Poliakoff, quoted in Serge Poliakoff, Retrospective 1938-1963, exh. cat, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1963, p. 13).