The 80 best quotes by Pablo Picasso

These are the best famous quotes from one of the most renowned painters of the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso (born Pablo Ruiz Picasso, 1881 - 1973) was a brilliant Spanish painter and sculptor, born in Malaga, creator and representative of Cubism.

He considered himself a communist and was a tireless worker of art, to the point of being internationally recognized as one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century.

Picasso's phrases (and famous quotes).

From a family of artists, Pablo Picasso developed from an early age a special sense for art and painting.. During his life he went through several stages in which he developed completely different styles, until he reached cubism, which was his hallmark.

In today's article we are going to know the best phrases of Pablo Picasso and some of his most representative quotes.

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

A phrase that shows us a certain subjectivism when it comes to approaching an artistic creation, or simply when it comes to visualizing reality.

2. When we love a woman we do not begin to measure her limbs.

Love is much more than a matter of proportions.

3. We should not discriminate between things. As far as things are concerned, there are no class distinctions. We must choose what is good for us wherever we can find it.

Choose positively, but do not discriminate.

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

Picasso just put it on canvas.

5. Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking borders and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.

The open mind does not understand labels or limits.

6. What is a face really? its own photo? its make-up? or is it a face painted by a painter or by another painter?... Doesn't everyone look at themselves in their own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.

Another proof of the subjectivism that moved the work of Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

7. Art is a finger in the ass of the bourgeoisie.

Always highlighting the privileges of the ruling classes.

8. To flourish, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.

To reinvent itself is to start from scratch, without biases or apriorisms.

9. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but the application of what instinct and brain can conceive beyond any canon.

A phrase that sums up his creative mindset.

10. Manifestation takes place from Spirit. It does not take place from form, from the physical world. You must know that whatever you want to manifest will happen.

On the expressive nature.

11. To finish a work... how absurd, to finish means to kill it, to rid it of its soul... to give it the coup de grace for the painter and for painting.

Everything is in constant construction. Art understands nothing else.

12. Having fun with all these games, all this nonsense, all these image puzzles, I became famous... I'm just a public artist who has understood his time.

A very interesting self-description.

13. Photographers, along with dentists, are the two professions that are never satisfied with what they do. Every dentist would like to be a doctor and inside every photographer is a painter trying to get out.

Great reflection that may not please dentists and photographers...

14. I don't believe in accidents. There are no encounters in history, there are no accidents.

Everything has a reason.

15. Often, when reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can feel the pleasure derived 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.

A parallel between literature and painting.

16. That which is most abstract is perhaps the summit of reality.

Paradoxical thought of the great Pablo Picasso.

17. When it comes down to it, all you have is your being. Your being is a sun with a thousand rays.

A way of expressing the necessary love for oneself.

18. If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as a great work of art.

Aware of its popularity.

19. Matisse makes a drawing, then makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He is convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In the draw, nothing is better than the first attempt.

Great reflection on art, from the hand of another great painter.

20. Our goals can only be achieved through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must energetically act. There is no other route to success.

A motivational phrase like few others.

21. There is nothing more difficult than a line.

A paradox based on designs.

22. You make a complete painting for a peach and people think the opposite, that that particular peach is just a detail.

The ironies of art interpretation.

23. I am frightened by people who talk about beautiful things. What is beautiful? Something that escapes definition.

24. Youth has no age.

It is beyond numbers.

25. Paradise is to love many things with passion.

Another of the aphorisms of this great Spanish painter.

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

A curious reflection on nature's designs.

27. Is there anything more dangerous than empathic compression?

The fact of connecting with someone has its risks.

28. An idea is a starting point and nothing more. As soon as you elaborate it, thought transforms it.

It is a point from which the first lines are drawn.

29. When you begin to paint a portrait and seek a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you inevitably arrive at the egg. In the same way, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes the portrait.

An observation on the creative process of painting.

30. Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Luck does not exist in isolation; work brings it about.

31. Never allow a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so that you can enjoy your free time. Look for a situation in which your work brings you as much happiness as your free time.

Another of Picasso's phrases that have to do with our way of living life.

Everything exists in limited quantity, especially happiness.

Aphorism about what makes us happy.

33. Your work in life is your greatest seduction.

A maxim of life that invites us to reflect.

34. Drawing is a kind of hypnotism.

It has a lot to do with suggestion.

35. I, who have been involved with all styles of painting, can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion that carry snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same.

Around art there is a crust that has little to do with its essence, according to Picasso.

36. Art is never chaste. It should be forbidden to the ignorant innocents, never to be allowed contact with those who are not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. If art is chaste, it is not art.

It must have an experiential component.

37. Anything new, anything worth doing, cannot be recognized.

The authentic is rarely digestible by the general public.

38. Why assume that looking is seeing?

It may be something more to do with emotions than with sensory information.

39. People who read are people who dream.

Knowing about other worlds leads us to fantasize.

40. Music and art are the lights that guide the world.

Two ways to move humanity.

41. Museums are just a lot of lies.

Nothing exists protected behind a glass case.

42. We constantly move dust from one place to another, only to have it replaced by more dust: entropy always wins.

Chaos is the rule, not the exception.

43. When I was a kid I used to draw like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a child.

Being creative involves unlearning.

44. If we could take our brains out and just use our eyes....

A way of perceiving without rationalizing.

45. To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.

A way to get away from what surrounds us.

46. What could be taken for a precocious genius, is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. Maybe it will happen that this child will become a real painter one day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to start all over again, from scratch.

About children's creativity.

47. Unless your work causes you trouble, it's no good.

What has value is disruptive.

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

A cross between artistic modalities.

49. Imagination is real.

What we can imagine is part of what exists.

50. Copying others is necessary, but copying oneself is pathetic.

To pretend to repeat oneself in order to create a personal brand is a way of self-limitation.

51. In art, intentions are not enough and, as we say in Spanish, love must be demonstrated by deeds and not by reasons. What one does is what counts and not what one intended to do.

What matters is the product of the action.

52. What I find horrible nowadays is that people are always trying to find personality for themselves. No one cares about what we might call the ideal of a painter.

What makes us unique is not only reflected in our choices.

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

Reality is full of extraordinary facts.

54. Now there is fame. Of all the evils: hunger, misery, the misunderstanding of the public; fame is by far the worst. It is God's punishment for the artist. It is sad. It is true.

It can become a curse.

55. I don't want to be modern. I want to be eternal.

The desire to transcend, a very typical characteristic of artists.

56. A piece of space dust falls on your head every day... With each breath, we inhale a bit of the history of our universe, the past and future of our planet, the smells and stories of the world around us, even the seeds of life.

Our world is not limited to what we see.

57. I would like to live like a poor man with a lot of money.

An apparent contradiction based on humility.

58. God is really just another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, he just keeps trying other things.

In nature there is a great variety of designs.

59. A plagiarist is someone who steals from a person. A true artist steals from everyone.

Art is not about having totally original ideas.

60. The Parthenon is actually a corral on which someone built a roof; and they were adding columns and sculptures because there were people in Athens who were working and wanted to express themselves.

Art as an improvised process.

61. When art critics meet, they talk about Form, Structure and Meaning. When artists meet, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

A reflection loaded with humor.

62. The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about. The more technique there is, the less there is.

Technique is like a rail that limits our movements.

63. You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words.

With the most rudimentary tools you can create wonders.

64. Why are you trying to understand art? Are you trying to understand the song of a bird?

By its nature, art is beyond reason.

65. Art is not truth.

Mere representation of the real.

66. My hand tells me what I am thinking.

The flow of thoughts to the hand... or the other way around?

67. No one pays attention if you always say the same things, with the same words and the same tone of voice.

It is necessary to strike a blow on the table to make oneself heard.

68. I understand how people see things in the roots of trees, in the crack of a wall, in an eroded stone. But in marble? It comes in blocks and evokes no image. It doesn't inspire anything.

Your opinion about this material so often used in construction.

69. Painting is a blind man's profession. The painter does not paint what he sees, but what he feels.

A task full of introspection.

70. Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

The process of asking questions is, for this artist, the most interesting.

71. I don't search. I find.

Any situation brings fascinating discoveries.

72. The purpose of art is to wash the dust of everyday life from our souls.

A practice that takes us beyond the everyday.

73. Painting is just another form of journaling.

The art of painting reflects part of one's own identity and personal history.

74. Colors, with their characteristics, follow the changes of emotions.

We cannot value colors without their emotional component.

75. The artist is a receptacle of emotions that come from everywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

An original way of understanding the artist's creative task.

76. You don't make art, you find it.

Art comes to you. Great famous quote by Picasso.

77. Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

A matter of prioritizing elements.

78. Love is the best refreshment in life.

He who feels loved is capable of prolonging his life.

79. All art is erotic.

The beauty captured in Picasso's paintings is a good example of this.

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

Art is reinterpreting, never copying.