Top 440 Quotes & Sayings by Pablo Picasso - Page 7

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

There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing. What is color?

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

As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes - and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done

I don't seek, I find.

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.

It's insane how many Roman coins are being found! It's as if all Romans had holes in their pockets. They sowed coins wherever they went. Even in the fields. Maybe to grow money . . .

How could Michelangelo have seen his David in a block of marble? Man began to make images only because he discovered them nearly formed around him, already within reach. He saw them in a bone, in the bumps of a cave, in a piece of wood. One form suggested a woman to him, another a buffalo, still another the head of a monster.

The revolutionary artist does not only focus on the negative aspects of capitalist lives, but also creates visions of a revolutionary future.

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.

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.

Inspiration exists, but you have to find it working.

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 painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art.

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

When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.

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.

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.

The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.

So there's only one tactic for the state: kill the seers.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.

We didn't want to sign the painting itself, that would have interfered with the composition. And even later, for that reason or for another, I sometimes marked my canvases on the back. If you don't see my signature and the date, madam, it's because the frame is hiding it.

Good designers copy; great designers steal.

My friends back in Barcelona called me by that name (Picasso). It was stranger, more resonant, than "Ruiz." And those are probably the reasons I adopted it. Do you know what appealed to me about that name? Well, it was undoubtedly the double s, which is fairly unusual in Spain.

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.

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

"Picasso" is of Italian origin, as you know. And the name a person bears or adopts has its importance.

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.

Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more.

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

If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you.

I must keep on trying, just to keep the experiment going until I get tired of it all. Even if the last result is not necessarily the best, I stop when my interest in the problem wanes.

Those who attempts to explain a picture are on the wrong track most of the time.

I want to know one thing, what is color?

Painting is a jeu d'esprit.

If I don't have red, I use blue.

Man doesn't change. He keeps his habits. Instinctively, all those people found the same corner for their kitchen. To build a city, don't men choose the same sites? Under cities you always find other cities; other churches under churches, and other houses under houses.

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

The only thing that's important is the legend created by the picture, and not whether it continues to exist itself.

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.

Why should I copy this owl, this sea urchin? Why should I try to imitate nature? I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle.

If I like it, I say it's mine. If I don't I say it's a fake.

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

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?" -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

The fingerprints of the god who amused himself fashioning them - I can see them on any bone whatsoever.

If you have five elements available use only four. If you have four elements use three.

Motivation is in the world around us. We have an infinite amount of material at our disposal, in the lives of those we meet, in what we see and feel, in what we discuss and from the passion of every woman.

I always forbade everyone to clean my studios, dust them, not only for fear they would disturb my things, but especially because I always counted on the protection of dust. It's my ally. I always let it settle where it likes. It's like a layer of protection.

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies 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.

I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.

They are not men, they are not women, they are Americans.

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

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

Imitators? All right! Disciples if you like. But disciples be damned. It's not interesting.

Today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.

My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.

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

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