Pablo Picasso Quotes
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Do you think it interests me that this painting represents two figures? These two figures existed, they exist no more. The sight of them gave me an initial emotion, little by little their real presence grew indistinct they became a fiction for me, then they disappeared, or rather, were turned into problems of all kinds. For me they are no longer two figures but shapes and colours, don't misunderstand me, shapes and colours, though, that sum up the idea of the two figures and preserve the vibration of their existence.
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Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse.
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I don't know where he Marc Chagall gets those images; he must have an angel in his head.
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Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.
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...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.
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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.
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It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit! . . . I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.
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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.'
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I have always believed and still believe that artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to the conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake.
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Almost every evening in their common early-Cubist years, in Paris, either I went to 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 paintings. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was. a remark of Picasso to Françoise Gilot, December 1908
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When it comes right down to it, all you have is your self. Your Self is a sun with a thousand rays.
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The only thing that's important is the legend created by the picture, and not whether it continues to exist itself.
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Good designers copy; great designers steal.
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Imitators? All right! Disciples if you like. But disciples be damned. It's not interesting.
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Picasso was telling Madame C- that he could paint anywhere and anyhow. That nothing in the world could stop him. That even if he were imprisoned, he would draw on the dust-covered prison walls and on the floor, with his fingers dripped in his own spit. He said he could paint then and there if he wanted to, or if he felt like it.
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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.
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A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder.
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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.
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I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion. Boisgeloup, winter 1934.
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Whether he wants it or not, man is the instrument of nature; she imposes on him character and appearance.
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The quality of a painter depends on the amount of past he carries with him.
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For a long time I limited myself to one colour - as a form of discipline.
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The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
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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.