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Pablo Picasso
72 quotes
“Among the several sins that I have been accused of committing, none is more false than the one that I have, as the principal objective in my work, the spirit of research. When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for. In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by facts and not by reasons... [Paris 1923].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
“When I hear people speak of the evolution of an artist, it seems to me that they are considering him standing between two mirrors that face each other and reproduce his image an infinite number of times, and that they contemplate the successive images of one mirror as his past, and the images of the other mirror as his future, while his real image is taken as his present. They do not consider that they all are the same images in different planes... [Paris 1923].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
“They speak of naturalism in opposition to modern painting. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. Velasquez left us his idea of the people of his epoch. Undoubtedly they were different from what he painted them, but we cannot conceive a Philip IV in any other way than the one Velasquez painted... [Paris 1923].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 312
“I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research in connection with modern painting. In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man who, with his eyes fixed on the ground, spends his life looking for the purse that fortune should put in his path. The one who finds something no matter what it might be, even if his intention were not to search for it, at least arouses our curiosity, if not our admiration.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. 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, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many think that Cubism is an art of transition, an experiment which is to bring ulterior results. Those who think that way have not understood it. Cubism is not either a seed or a foetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life. A mineral substance, having geometric formation, is not made so for transitory purposes, it is to remain what it is and will always have its own form.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, psychoanalysis, music, and what not have been related to cubism to give it an easier interpretation. All this has been pure literature, not to say nonsense, which brought bad results, blinding people with theories. Cubism has kept itself within the limits and limitations of painting, never pretending to go beyond it.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of research has often made painting go astray, and made the artist lose himself in mental lucubrations. Perhaps this has been the principal fault of modern art. The spirit of research has poisoned those who have not fully understood all the positive and conclusive elements in modern art and has made them attempt to paint the invisible and, therefore, the unpaintable.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And from the point of view of art there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies. That those lies are necessary to our mental selves is beyond any doubt, as it is through them that we form our aesthetic point of view of life. (Paris 1923)”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I also often hear the word 'evolution'. Repeatedly I am asked to explain how my painting evolved. 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. Art does not evolve by itself, the ideas of people change and with them their mode of expression. (Paris 1923)”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not believe I have used radically different elements in the different manners I have used in my paintings. If the subjects I have wanted to express have suggested different ways of expression, I have never hesitated to adopt them. I have never made trials nor experiments. Whenever I had something to say I have said it in the manner in which I have felt it ought to be said. Different motives inevitably require different methods of expression. (Paris 1923)”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, attributed to Picasso in: Jean Cocteau (1932), Opium: The Diary of an Addict. p. 63
“It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Picasso (1937), quote in: William Rowlandson (2007), Reading Lezama's Paradiso. p. 115.
“...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paul Jones (2011), The Sociology of Architecture: Constructing Identities. p. 47.
“But there is one very odd thing - to notice that basically a picture doesn't change, that the first 'vision' remains almost intact, in spite of appearances. I often ponder on a light and a dark when I have put them into a painting; I try hard to break them up by interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I note that what I put in to correct my first vision has disappeared, and that, after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934]”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 313
“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!”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 267).
“In the old days pictures went forward toward completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture — then I destroy it. In the end though, nothing is lost: the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 267)
“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].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Friendenthal (1963, p. 256).
“It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact (Boisgeloup, winter 1934).”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Friedenthal, (1963, p. 256).
“Abstract art is only painting. What about drama? There is no abstract art. You always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 270).
“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 affects us more or less intensely. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Friedenthal, (1963, pp. 257-258).
“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. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934]”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Friedenthal, (1963, p. 258)
“It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is. Cézanne would never have interested me if he had lived and thought like Jaques-Emile Blanche, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Cézanne, the teaching of Cézanne, the anguish of Van Gogh, in short the inner drama of the man. The rest is false. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Friedenthal, (1963, p. 259)
“How can you expect a beholder to experience my picture as I experienced it? A picture comes to me a long time beforehand; who knows how long a time beforehand, I sensed, saw, and painted it and yet the next day even I do not understand what I have done. How can anyone penetrate my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thought, which have taken a long time to fashion themselves and come to the surface, above all to grasp what I put there, perhaps involuntary.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Richard Friedenthal, (1963, p. 260).
“I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 271).
“Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived... The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 271), quoted in Chipp (1978, 266); As cited in: Constance Milbrath (1998), Patterns of Artistic Development in Children, p. 257.
“When we did Cubist paintings [Picasso and Georges Braque, in their early Cubist period in Paris], our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets [a.o. Appolinaire and Cendral] followed our endeavor attentively but they never dictated it to us. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Picasso in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008
“You don't need to show them to me [the notes of the complete interview which Christian Zervos], editor of 'Cahiers d'Art' showed Picasso after their conversations at Boisgeloup: Picasso's country place then]. The essential thing in our period of weak morale is to create enthusiasm. How many people have actually read Homer? All the same the whole world talks of him. In this way the Homeric legend is created. A legend in this sense provokes a valuable stimulus. Enthusiasm is what we need most, we and the younger generation. [Boisgeloup, 1935]”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008
“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 less both of us fear p. 311”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defence against the enemy.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Les lettres françaises (1943-03-24).
“When I was a child 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.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Life with Picasso, by François Gilot, 1964, p. 60
“When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. I'm not crazy about those cocks and asses and flying violinists and all the folklore, but his canvasses are really painted, not just thrown together. Some of the last thing's he's done in Vence [where Matisse painted his late frescos in the chapel] convince me that there's never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has. [Picasso is reacting to Chagall's daughter Ida, 1952]”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a writing of Francoise Gilot; as quoted in Marc Chagall, – a Biography, by Sidney Alexander, Cassell, London, 1978, p. 440
“Les gloires, les trompettes, les palmes... et les bas-reliefs,... tout cela fait un monument.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Picasso (1952). Quoted in: Michael D. Garval (2004), "A Dream of Stone": Fame, Vision, and Monumentality in Nineteenth-century French Literary Culture. p. 226.
“When I don't have red, I use blue.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pablo Picasso (1953); quoted in: Kilkenny (2004), Doomsday Marauders, p. 83.
“When Matisse died, he left me his Odalisques 'as a legacy', he proclaimed.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: after the death of Matisse (1954); as quoted in Matisse & Picasso, By Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 7
“On August 2, 1914, I took Braque and Derain to the Gare d'Avignon [drafted as a soldier for World war 1.] I never saw them again [not literally a fact, but the close relation between Picasso and Braque ended].”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in My Galleries and Painters, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, New York Viking Press, 1971, p. 46
“Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in Vogue, 1 November 1956.
“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into a sun.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Sergei Eisenstein (1957), Film form [and]: The film sense, p. 127.
“On met très longtemps à devenir jeune.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Jean Cocteau The Hand of a Stranger (Journal d'un Inconnu). Horizon Press. 1959 [1953].
“Even the signature of Kodra is a work of art.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Repubblica, 2006
“The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is a spider's web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 258 (translation Daphne Woodward)
“L'art n'est pas chaste [...], on devrait l’interdire aux ignorants innocents, ne jamais mettre en contact avec lui ceux qui y sont insuffisamment préparés. Oui, l'art est dangereux. Ou s'il est chaste, ce n'est pas de l'art.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote by Antonina Vallentin (1963 [1957]), Picasso, p. 168.
“[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As discussed in this entry from Quote Investigator, the origin seems to be the article "Pablo Picasso: A Composite Interview" by William Fifield which appeared in The Paris Review 32, Summer-Fall 1964, and collected a n…
“It's like God's. 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.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Picasso quoted in 'TIME'; quoted in: The Atlantic, Vol. 214 (1964), p. 97.
“Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies 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.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote (1964); as quoted in Picasso and Company (trans. 1966) by Gyula Brassaï
“You have got to be able to picture side by side everything Matisse and I were doing at that time. No one has ever looked at Matisse's painting more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote by old Picasso (1960's); as quoted in 'Matisse & Picasso', Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p 1
“When there's anything to steal, I steal”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in: Thought. Vol. 17 (1965). p. 154.
“It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the first moon landing, quoted in The New York Times (1969-07-21).