54 quotes
When I don't have red, I use blue.
Pablo Picasso (1953)
It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.
Picasso (1937)
On August 2, 1914, I took Braque and Derain to the Gare d'Avignon [drafted as a soldier for World war 1.] I never saw them again [not literally a fact, but the close relation between Picasso and Braque ended].
I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.
It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit!
When there's anything to steal, I steal
Thought. Vol. 17 (1965)
To contradict. To show one eye full face and one in profile. Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them! My painting is a series of non-sequiturs. ...
Pierre Cabanne (1977)
[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.
When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.
Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
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. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.
Picasso Speaks (1923)
I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].
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 affects us more or less intensely. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
Attributed Tomás R. Villasante (1994)
I don't know where he [ Marc Chagall ] gets those images; he must have an angel in his head.
Attributed
For a long time I limited myself to one colour — as a form of discipline.
Attributed Picasso on Art (1988)
People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.
Attributed Picasso on Art (1988)
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Misattributed Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002)
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Disputed Terence M Dorn (2021)
People want to find a 'meaning' in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.
Attributed Ingo F. Walther (1996)