38 Pablo Picasso Quotes on Art

Pablo Picasso quotes on art

1. For a long time I limited myself to one colour - as a form of discipline.

3. Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.

4. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

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

8. El arte es una mentira que nos acerca a la verdad.

13. La inspiracion existe, pero tiene que encontrarte trabajando.

14. La pintura es mas fuerte que yo, siempre consigue que haga lo que ella quiere.

16. Mi madre un dia me dijo: 'Si te haces soldado, seras General; si te haces monje, terminaras como el Papa.' En cambio, me hice pintor y ahora soy Picasso.

17. Si se sabe exactamente lo que se va a hacer, ?para que hacerlo?.

18. Si hubiera una sola verdad, no se podrian hacer cien lienzos sobre un mismo tema.

19. Un pintor es un hombre que pinta lo que vende. Un artista, en cambio, es un hombre que vende lo que pinta.

20. Yo no busco, yo encuentro.

21. Yo no digo todo, mas pinto todo.

22. Yo no evoluciono, yo soy.

23. Yo no pinto las cosas como las veo, yo pinto como las pienso.

24. Yo no trabajo segun la Naturaleza, sino delante de ella, con ella. Un pintor debe observar la Naturaleza, pero jamas confundirla con la pintura.

25. If they took away my paints I'd use pastels. If they took away my pastels I'd use crayons. If they took away my crayons I'd use pencils. If they stripped me naked and threw me in prison I'd spit on my finger and paint on the walls.

28. Every child is an artist. It's a challenge to remain an artist when you grow up.

29. 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.

30. Good art bristles with razor blades.

31. Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

32. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

33. I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.

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

40. When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express that which was within us.

41. The three most astonishing things in the past half-century were The Blues, Cubism and...Polish Vodka.

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

46. When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.

49. Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

50. Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

51. Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

52. Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them!

53. I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

54. There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

55. Give me a museum and I'll fill it.

56. A friend built a modern house and he suggested that Picasso too should have one built. But, said Picasso, of course not, I want an old house. Imagine, he said, if Michael Angelo would have been pleased if someone had given him a fine piece of Renaissance furniture, not at all.