Sponges are the portraits of the readers of my monochromes who, after having travelled in the blue of my paintings, came back totally impregnated in sensibility like the sponges.
To paint space, I owe it to myself to go there, to that very space... without illusions or tricks, nor with a plane or a parachute or a rocket ship: the painter of space must go there with his own means, with an independent individual force, in a word, he must be capable of levitation. (1960)
