Pablo Picasso Quotes

And fame, for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated. I am rich. ~ Pablo Picasso

If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance. ~ Pablo Picasso

There's nothing so similar to one poodle dog as another poodle dog, and that goes for women, too. ~ Pablo Picasso

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme. ~ 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

To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved. ~ 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

A painting is not thought out in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it ~ 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

What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing. ~ Pablo Picasso

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. ~ Pablo Picasso

A good picture, any picture, has to be bristling with razor blades. ~ Pablo Picasso

Every positive value has its price in negative terms ... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima. ~ Pablo Picasso

One cannot be a sorcerer all the time. How could one live? ~ 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

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

A piece of space-dust falls on your head once every day ... With every breath, we inhale a bit of the story of our universe, our planet's past and future, the smells and stories of the world around us, even the seeds of life. ~ Pablo Picasso

For me, there are two kinds of women - goddesses and doormats. ~ Pablo Picasso

I simply painted images of what was before my eyes; it is for others to find hidden meaning in them. ~ Pablo Picasso

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. ~ Pablo Picasso

Style is besides the point. Nobody would pay attention if one always said the same thing, in the same words and the same tone of voice. ~ Pablo Picasso

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. ~ 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

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself. ~ Pablo Picasso

Now there is fame! Of all - hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public - fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true. ~ Pablo Picasso

It is a miracle that one does not dissolve into one's bath like a lump of sugar. ~ Pablo Picasso

Computers are stupid. ~ Pablo Picasso

I do things I don't know how to do in order to learn how to do them. ~ Pablo Picasso

If I could say this I wouldn't have to paint. ~ Pablo Picasso

I do not evolve, I AM. ~ Pablo Picasso

A good president does with executive power what Pablo Picasso did with paint. He takes bills into new and slightly discomfiting territory. He puts extra eyes on policies. He moves the mouth of the Supreme Court from where it should be to where it must be. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colours I am going to use. ~ Pablo Picasso

Cubism is not a reality you can take in your hand. It's more like a perfume, in front of you, behind you, to the sides, the scent is everywhere but you don't quite know where it comes from. ~ 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

When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don't have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you ~ Pablo Picasso

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

Youth has no age. ~ Pablo Picasso

Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do it's bidding. ~ Pablo Picasso

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

Every time I change wives I should burn the last one. That way I'd be rid of them. They wouldn't be around to complicate my existence. Maybe, that would bring back my youth, too. You kill the woman and you wipe out the past she represents. ~ 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

To know what you're going to draw, you have to begin drawing. ~ Pablo Picasso

We don't grow older we grow riper. ~ Pablo Picasso

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea. ~ Pablo Picasso

You're either a goddess ... or a doormat. ~ Pablo Picasso

Do you think it interests me that this painting represents two figures? These two figures existed, they exist no more. The sight of them gave me an initial emotion, little by little their real presence grew indistinct. They became a fiction for me, then they disappeared, or rather, were turned into problems of all kinds. For me they are no longer two figures but shapes and colours. Don't misunderstand me: shapes and colours, though, that sum up the idea of the two figures and preserve the vibration of their existence. ~ Pablo Picasso

Rhythm is a perception of time ... when drawing, the tiredness of the hand is a rhythm. ~ Pablo Picasso

I am always making that what I am not capable, in an attempt to learn how to doing it. ~ Pablo Picasso

Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create. ~ Pablo Picasso

[In developing your potential] ... I don't develop; I am ~ Pablo Picasso

I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who "appreciate" beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There's no such thing. I never "appreciate," any more than I "like." I love it or I hate. ~ Pablo Picasso

Inspiration exists, but you have to find it working. ~ Pablo Picasso

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. ~ Pablo Picasso

When I am finished painting, I paint again for relaxation. ~ Pablo Picasso

The first half of life is learning to be an adult-the second half is learning to be a child. ~ Pablo Picasso

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

To arrive at abstraction, it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality. ~ Pablo Picasso

You see these thick curtains shut out the daylight: artificial light suits me a great deal better; it's absolutely steady, and much more exciting. ~ Pablo Picasso

What I want is that my picture should evoke nothing but emotion. ~ Pablo Picasso

I don't develop; I am. ~ Pablo Picasso

In the Chauvet Cave, there is a painting of a bison embracing the lower part of a naked female body. Why does Pablo Picasso, who had no knowledge of the Chauvet Cave, use exactly the same motif in his series of drawings of the Minotaur and the woman? Very, very strange. ~ Werner Herzog

Go and do the things you can't. That is how you get to do them. ~ Pablo Picasso

If one knows exactly what is going to be done, why do it? ~ Pablo Picasso

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

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order. ~ Pablo Picasso

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

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

People don't realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it. ~ Pablo Picasso

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

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time. ~ Pablo Picasso

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

An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality. ~ Pablo Picasso

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero. ~ Pablo Picasso

We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it. ~ Pablo Picasso

Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown. ~ Pablo Picasso

When you are young and without success, you have only a few friends. Then, later on, when you are rich and famous, you still have a few ... if you are lucky. ~ Pablo Picasso

I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else. ~ Pablo Picasso

The more technique you have the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is the less there is. ~ Pablo Picasso

When it comes right down to it, all you have is your self. Your Self is a sun with a thousand rays ... ~ Pablo Picasso

When they say that I am too old to make a thing, I try to make it immediately. ~ Pablo Picasso

It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact. ~ Pablo Picasso

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! ... I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it. ~ Pablo Picasso

Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us. ~ Pablo Picasso

I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it. ~ Pablo Picasso

Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock. ~ Pablo Picasso

Love must be proven by facts and not by reasons. ~ Pablo Picasso

It takes a long time to become young. ~ 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

If I had known there was such a thing as Islamic Calligraphy, I would never have started to paint. I have strived to reach the highest levels of artistic mastery, but I found that Islamic Calligraphy was there ages before I was. ~ Pablo Picasso

I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary. ~ Pablo Picasso

I like all paintings. I always look at the paintings, good or bad, in barbershops, furniture stores, provincial hotels. I'm like a drinker who needs wine. As long as it is wine, it doesn't matter which wine. ~ Pablo Picasso

What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch ... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself. ~ Pablo Picasso

How often have I found that wanting to use blue, I didn't have it so I used a red instead of the blue. ~ Pablo Picasso

When we did Cubist paintings, our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets followed our endeavour attentively but they never dictated it to us. ~ Pablo Picasso

For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography ~ Pablo Picasso

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

Everything we can dream can be real. ~ Pablo Picasso

Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding? ~ Pablo Picasso

While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the canvas. ~ Pablo Picasso