Pablo Picasso quotes:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

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.

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.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.

Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

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

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

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

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

We don't grow older, we grow riper.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

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

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

To draw you must close your eyes and sing.

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

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

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

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.

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

Action is the foundational key to all success.

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

Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.

It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

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

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

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.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

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.

The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

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.

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?

Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.

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.

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

Almost every evening, either I went to [Georges] Braque's studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was.

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

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

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

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

The goal I proposed myself in making cubism? To paint and nothing more... with a method linked only to my thought... Neither the good nor the true; neither the useful nor the useless.

Art is the best possible introduction to the culture of the world. I love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch. It washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

You're either a goddess ... or a doormat.

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

In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

I draw like other people bite their nails.

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.

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

What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).

When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my pictures of Guernica, they'd ask 'Did you do this?'. And I'd say, 'No, you did.'

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.

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

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

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

We have a definite but unknown quantity of experience at our disposal. As soon as the hourglass is turned, the sand will begin to run out and once it starts, it cannot stop until it's all gone.

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

Everything you can imagine is real.

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.

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.

All things considered, there is only Matisse.

In the end there is only Matisse.

If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.

I have had no true friends, only lovers.

When I am told I am too old to do something, I try to do it right away.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

I don't say everything, but I paint everything.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

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

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

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.

The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves.

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

Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist while still achieving milestones and outcomes as required by certain funders and policy-makers.

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

When one starts from a portrait and seeks by successive eliminations to find pure form... one inevitably ends up with an egg.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction

I dont want to do business with those who dont make a profit, because they can't give the best service

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

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

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