We came to Paris as though impelled by fate. We sought the sun that would light up the shadowy corners within us, within our souls which suffered in a kind of darkness. Each from his own corner of the world found his weary way to Paris, not to make his name—at that time there was little hope of achieving success—but in order to express himself differently, completely, and, above all, to find the artistic means to give outward manifestation to inward feelings

It should not, however, be thought that we were betraying the countries from which we had come. On the contrary. I believe that deep within ourselves we remained even more faithful to them, thanks to France, without whom the artistic sources of our native lands could not have found clear expression. No one can fully explain this phenomenon, but, over the past two hundred years, only in the atmosphere of Paris has it been possible to evaluate the qualities and defects of a painting. In this country the chemistry of the plastic arts becomes visible. Here it can be weighed, independently of all "-isms," just as formerly in Italy, and in other countries, a kind of plastic eloquence could be appreciated. This is not due merely to the French Academy—it is the very air of the country, and other things more difficult to define, that have produced the colours of a Watteau, a Chardin, a Cézanne, a Monet. . . .

I left my native land in 1910. At that moment I decided that I needed Paris. I came because I sought the light of Paris, its freedom, its refinement and the skills of the craft. Paris lit up my shadowy world like the sun. But in seeing the light, at the Louvre and elsewhere in France, I did not forget the country where I was born. On the contrary. I saw it more clearly. I could, of course, have expressed myself in the town where I was born. But I wanted to see with my own eyes the things I had heard about so far away that "revolution of the eye," the colors that blended freely into each other, reflecting the light whilst striving energetically with one another in the flow of a studied or a casually dominant line. The sun of art shone only in Paris. It seemed to me then, as it still does, that there can be no greater revolution of the eye than that I experienced on my arrival in Paris.