Art Pablo Picasso Quotes & Sayings

When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll be the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. — Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was notorious for sucking the energy out of the people he met. His granddaughter Marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of oil paints. You's have a great time hanging out all day with Picasso, and then you's go home nervous and exhausted, and Picasso would go back to his studio and paint all night, using the energy he'd sucked out of you. — Austin Kleon

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary." - Pablo Picasso — David Sherwin

Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy. — Pablo Picasso

I have always believed and still believe that artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to the conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake. — Pablo Picasso

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. — Pablo Picasso

Sex and art are the same thing. — Pablo Picasso

Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world ... I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands. — Pablo Picasso

We now know that Art is not the truth ... but rather a way of approaching the truth. — Pablo Picasso

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. — Pablo Picasso

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. — Pablo Picasso

Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass. — Pablo Picasso

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language. — Pablo Picasso

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance. — Pablo Picasso

I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself. — Pablo Picasso

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. — Pablo Picasso

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun — Pablo Picasso

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. — Pablo Picasso

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. — Pablo Picasso

I paint what I think, not what I see. — Pablo Picasso

In art, there is neither past nor future. The art that is not in the present will never be. — Pablo Picasso

Art is theft. - Pablo Picasso — Anonymous

I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars and that's a luxury I cannot afford. — Pablo Picasso

You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words. — Pablo Picasso

Sculpture is the art of the intelligence. — Pablo Picasso

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about? -Pablo Picasso. — Pablo Picasso

Art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order. — Pablo Picasso

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. — Pablo Picasso

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art. — Pablo Picasso

Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits ... In art, there is room for all possibilities. — Pablo Picasso

Art is a lie that makes us realise truth ... that is given us to understand. — Pablo Picasso

The painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art. — Pablo Picasso

An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work. — Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Mel Gibson, Lou Reed, Norman Mailer, Vanessa Redgrave, Van Morrison - each is distinguished by controversies unrelated to his or her art; by many accounts, some of them are not nice people at all. — Steve Erickson

The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon. — Pablo Picasso

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. — Pablo Picasso

Art is a leap into the dark. — Pablo Picasso

When you come right down to it all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing. — Pablo Picasso

People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is. — Pablo Picasso

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters. — Pablo Picasso

You don't make art, you find it — Pablo Picasso

From the point of view of art, there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies. — Pablo Picasso

I'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries. — Pablo Picasso

If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you. — Pablo Picasso

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was ... — Pablo Picasso

I never calculate. That is why those who do, calculate so much less accurately than I. — Pablo Picasso

The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present. — Pablo Picasso

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. — Pablo Picasso

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. — Pablo Picasso

Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art. — Pablo Picasso

Art isn't done to decorate apartments, but to wage war against the enemy. — Pablo Picasso

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes. — Pablo Picasso

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art. — Pablo Picasso

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things. — Pablo Picasso

My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art. — Pablo Picasso

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell. — Pablo Picasso

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous ... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time. — Pablo Picasso

Art sweeps the everyday dust from your soul. — Pablo Picasso

To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today that it ever was. — Pablo Picasso

No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid. — Pablo Picasso

Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches. I search constantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research. — Pablo Picasso

This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax. — Pablo Picasso

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. — Pablo Picasso

All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art. — Pablo Picasso

What do you think an artist is? ... he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war. — Pablo Picasso

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. — Pablo Picasso

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. — Pablo Picasso

Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms. Well then, think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affect us more or less intensely. — Pablo Picasso

In art, practice always comes before theory. — Pablo Picasso

Art is a lie that reveals the truth. — Pablo Picasso

Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things. — Pablo Picasso

It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946, when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met, principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art. — Jerry Saltz

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint. — Pablo Picasso

Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty. — Pablo Picasso

The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? — Pablo Picasso

Music and art are the guiding lights of the world. — Pablo Picasso

Art is lies that tell the truth. — Pablo Picasso

We might adapt for the artist the joke about there being nothing more dangerous than instruments of war in the hands of generals. In the same way, there is nothing more dangerous than justice in the hands of judges, and a paint brush in the hands of a painter! Just think of the danger to society! But today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets because we no longer admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst. — Pablo Picasso

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth. — Pablo Picasso

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense. — Pablo Picasso

They'll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never. — Pablo Picasso

All art is subversive. — Pablo Picasso

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. — Pablo Picasso

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? — Pablo Picasso

Art is not chaste. Those ill prepared should be allowed no contact with art. Art is dangerous. If it is chaste, it is not art. — Pablo Picasso

Abstract art is only painting. And what's so dramatic about that? There is no abstract art. One must always begin with something. Afterwards one can remove all semblance of reality; there is no longer any danger as the idea of the object has left an indelible imprint. — Pablo Picasso

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone — Pablo Picasso

It is not what an artist does that counts ... but what he is. — Pablo Picasso

The function of the artist is the mythologization of the culture and the world. In the visual arts there were two men whose work handled mythological themes in a marvelous way: Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso. — Joseph Campbell

Having studied art history, as opposed to political history, I tend to incorporate found objects into my books. Just as Pablo Picasso glued a fragment of furniture onto the canvas of Still Life with Chair Caning, I like to use whatever's lying around to paint pictures of the past--traditional pigment like archival documents but also the added texture of whatever bits and bobs I learn from looking out bus windows or chatting up people I bump into on the road. — Sarah Vowell

Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken. — Pablo Picasso

The purpose of Art is to create enthusiasm. — Pablo Picasso

When I paint a woman in an armchair, the armchair is there to show illness and death-or as a protection. — Pablo Picasso