Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.

I believe that it's better to have a conviction, believe strongly in something, and then the convictions create a style that reflects your mentality.

Bullfights have so much color. Not just the matador but also the bull, the arena, and the public. It's all very festive.

My popularity has to do with the divorce between modern art, where everything is obscure, and the viewer who often feels he needs a professor to tell them whether it's good or not. I believe a painting has to talk directly to the viewer, with composition, color and design, without a professor to explain it.

I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.

Art is always an exaggeration in some sense; in color, in form, even in theme, etc... but it has always been this way. It is the same with the nature of some works by Giotto or Massacio, or the color of life as expressed by Van Gogh.