"Abstract art evolved out of notions in symbolism and the modernisms that followed it. Even expressionism welcomed its spirit as the central thought in its own idiom. Kandinsky’s art and poetics represent a confirmation of note and a case in point.

Nevertheless the abstraction process in symbolism prefigures an art that abandons all likeness of things real, and yet again pushes reality and the images that represent it into the realm of the intangible. If I might use a metaphor I would say that symbolism neglects identifiable realities for a wider reality of visions, both exemplifying and universal.

These two avenues are not diametrically opposed but complement each other. I, for one, don’t feel any embarrasment at having practised first the abstract and then the realistic; nor would I hesitate to be active on both sides of the divide simultaneously. Whatever conflict may exist between so calles figurative and abstract art is rearguard action and is nothing but a provincialism in the general scene of things artistic.
I feel that the characters I paint today - my “inquisito/inquisitori” (defendant/interrogator) - are just as much abstract, a hallucination of this century’s finale, as my abstract canvases are a tangible and realistic witness of the energies and emotional and psychological tensions of our age."