In 1912, when I was working in The Hague, I first saw a drawing by Louis Sullivan of one of his buildings. It interested me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My wife was the first art collector in the family, and I didn't become interested until around 1973. The first important artwork we bought was a Van Gogh drawing of two peasant houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
It was the drawing that led me to architecture, the search for light and astonishing forms.
I was interested in making work that physically changed as it circulated through the art world.
Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published.
I've been working in sculpture and painting since 1920.
I finished my studies in England, I opened my studio in London, and the first one-man exhibit I had on Bond Street, which was opened by the Austrian ambassador.
I started doing sculpture in 1959. I had no commissions then. They were painted, similar in style to the paintings... At a certain point, I decided I didn't want an edge between two colors, I wanted color differences in literal space.
This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.
On one occasion in 1987 the security police came looking for me because of a drawing that I'd published.
Some of these sketches were done at the very beginning of the Pirates project, when I was trying to find a direction for myself. That was the early sixties... maybe 61 or 62.