Best 350 quotes of Pablo Picasso on MyQuotes

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.

Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been so deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

Action is the fundamental key to success.

All art is subversive.

Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.

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

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

All Children are Artists

All children paint like geniuses. What do we do to them that so quickly dulls this ability?

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.

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.

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.

An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.

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

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

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

A painter is a man who paints what he sells; an artist, on the other hand, is a man who sells what he paints.

A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.

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

A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder

A picture lives by its legend - not by anything else.

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change.

A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.

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

Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.

Art is a leap into the dark.

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

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Art is lies that tell the truth.

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.

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.

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.

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.

Art isn't done to decorate apartments, but to wage war against the enemy.

...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.

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.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

Art sweeps the everyday dust from your soul.

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

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.

Because I cannot work except in solitude, it is necessary that I live my work and that is impossible except in solitude.

Braque always said that the only thing that counts, in painting, is the intention, and it's true. What counts is what one wants to do, and not what one does. That's what's important.

But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown-a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

Can you imagine me calling myself "Ruiz"? "Pablo Ruiz"? "Diego-José Ruiz"? Or "Juan-Népomucène Ruiz"? I was given I don't know how many names.

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

Computers are stupid.