Pablo Picasso Quotes (129 Quotes)


    Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

    Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

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

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

    When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.



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

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

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

    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.


    They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

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


    Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?

    Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

    The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.

    Something sacred, that's it. We ought to be able to say that such and such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power, because it is 'touched by God.'

    I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same.

    Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.


    Often while reading a book one feels that the author wouold heave preferred to paint rather than to wirte one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.


    You know, it's just like being a peddler. You want two breasts Well, here you are -- two breasts. We must see to it that the man looking at the picture has at hand everything he needs to paint a nude. If you really give him everything he needs -- and the best -- he'll put everything where it belongs, with his own eyes. Each person will make for himself the kind of nude he wants, with the nude that I will have made for him.

    I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!

    It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

    I'd like to live like a poor man with lots of money.

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


    My work is like a diary. To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors life.

    I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.

    To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.


    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.

    The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face.

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

    To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.


    You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.


    Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

    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.


    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.

    Picassos Wife In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing.

    He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

    I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars -- it's a luxury I can't afford.

    It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

    Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.

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


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    Pablo Picasso - Michelangelo - Pierre Auguste Renoir - Paul Gauguin - Mary Cassatt - Jean-Michel Basquiat - J. B. Yeats - Henry Ossawa Tanner - Francisco de Goya - Claude Monet


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