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 art worker, to the point of being internationally recognized as one of the most influential painters of the entire 20th century.
Picasso phrases (and famous quotes)
From a family of artists, Pablo Picasso developed a special sense for art and painting from an early age During his life he went through several stages in which he developed completely different styles, until reaching cubism, which was his hallmark.
In today’s article we are going to learn about the best phrases by Pablo Picasso and several of his most representative famous quotes.
1. Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror or the painter?
A phrase that shows us a certain subjectivism when approaching an artistic creation, or simply when visualizing reality.
2. When we love a woman we do not begin to measure her extremities.
Love is much more than a question 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 where we can find it.
Choose positively, but do not discriminate.
4. When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my Guernica photos, they would ask ‘Did you do this?’ And I’d say, ‘No, you did it.’
Picasso only captured it on canvas.
5. Critics, mathematicians, scientists and meddlers 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 really is a face? your own photo? her makeup? Or is it a face painted by a painter or another painter?… Don’t everyone look at themselves in their own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.
Another proof of the subjectivism that motivated the work of Pablo Ruiz Picasso.
7. Art is a finger up the ass of the bourgeoisie.
Always highlighting the privileges of the wealthy classes.
8. To flourish, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.
Reinventing yourself is starting from scratch, without biases or a priori.
9. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but the application of what instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.
A phrase that sums up his creative mentality.
10. Manifestation takes place from the Spirit. It does not take place from the form, from the physical world. You must know that what you want to manifest will happen.
About expressive nature.
11. Finishing a job?… how absurd, finishing means killing it, ridding it of its soul… giving the coup de grace for the painter and for the painting.
Everything is under constant construction. Art does not understand anything else.
12. Having fun with all these games, all these nonsense, all these image puzzles, I became famous… I am 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 there 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.
A parallelism between literature and painting.
16. Whatever is most abstract may be the peak 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 to express the necessary love towards 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 re-copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He is convinced that the last, the most stripped, is the best, the purest, the definitive; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In lottery, nothing is better than the first try.
Great reflection on art, from the hand of another great painter.
20. Our objectives can only be achieved through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.
A motivating phrase like few others.
21. There is nothing more difficult than a line.
A paradox based on designs.
22. You do an entire painting for a peach and people think the opposite, that that particular peach is just a detail.
The ironies of art interpretation.
23. People who talk about beautiful things scare me. What is beautiful? Something that escapes definitions.
24. Youth has no age.
It’s beyond numbers.
25. Paradise is loving 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!
Curious reflection on the designs of nature.
27. Is there anything more dangerous than empathic understanding?
Connecting with someone has its risks.
28. An idea is a starting point and nothing more. As soon as you make it, the thought transforms it.
It is a point from which the first lines are drawn.
29. When you start to paint a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you inevitably arrive at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes the portrait.
An observation about the creative process of painting.
30. Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working
Luck does not exist as something isolated; work promotes its appearance.
31. Never let a dichotomy rule your life, a dichotomy where you hate what you do so you can enjoy your free time. Find 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.
32. Everything exists in limited quantity, especially happiness.
Aphorism about what makes us happy.
33. Your work in life is your greatest seduction.
A life maxim that invites you 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 the snobs and profiteers; 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 for the ignorant innocent, they should never 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 become something more related to emotions than to 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 bunch of lies.
Nothing exists protected behind a glass case.
42. We constantly move dust from one place to another, only for it to be replaced by more dust: entropy always wins.
Chaos is the norm, not the exception.
43. When I was a child I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a child.
Being creative means unlearning.
44. If we could take out our brain and use only 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, he disappears without a trace. Perhaps it will happen that that 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 job causes you problems, it’s no use.
What has value is disruptive.
48. Sculpture is the best comment a painter can make about 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 yourself is pathetic.
Trying to repeat yourself to create a personal brand is a way of limiting yourself.
51. In art, intentions are not enough and, as we say in Spanish, love must be demonstrated by actions and not by reasons. It is what you do that counts and not what you 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. Nobody cares about what we could call the ideal of a painter.
What makes us unique is not only reflected in our decisions.
53. Everything is a miracle. It’s a miracle one doesn’t dissolve in the bath like a sugar cube.
Reality is full of extraordinary events.
54. Now there is fame. Of all evils: hunger, misery, public incomprehension; fame is by far the worst. It is God’s punishment for the artist. It’s sad. It’s 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 in artists.
56. A piece of space dust falls on your head every day… With each breath, we inhale a little 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 doesn’t have a 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 over which someone built a roof; And they added 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 get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.
A reflection full of humor.
62. The more technique you have, the less you will have to worry. 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 a bird’s song?
By its nature, art is beyond reason.
65. Art is not truth.
Mere representation of reality.
66. My hand tells me what I’m thinking.
The flow of thoughts towards the hand… or the other way around?
67. Nobody pays attention if you always say the same things, with the same words and the same tone of voice.
It is necessary to bang on the table to make yourself heard.
68. I understand how people see things in the roots of trees, in the crack of a wall, in a weathered stone. But in marble? It comes in blocks and does not evoke any image. It doesn’t inspire anything.
Your opinion about this material widely 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’m not looking. Meeting.
Any situation involves 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 way to journal.
In the art of painting part of one’s own identity and personal history is reflected.
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 web.
An original way of understanding the creative task of the artist.
76. You don’t make art, you find it.
Art comes to you. Great famous quote from Picasso.
77. Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
A matter of prioritizing elements.
78. Love is the best refreshment in life.
Whoever 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 about them, not as I see them.
Art is reinterpreting, never copying.
81. I joined the communist party like a thirsty person who goes to the fountain to drink fresh water.
Picasso never had any impediment in making his ideological orientation public.
82. Action is the fundamental key to all success.
Without effective action we cannot achieve anything concrete.
83. Don’t worry, it will look like it
This was the response Picasso gave when he was told that his portrait did not resemble the model.
84. Sculpture is the art of intelligence.
Picasso loved all the arts of human civilization.
85. Only leave for tomorrow what you are willing to die without having done.
A somewhat drastic advice that we can use.
86. My membership in the communist party was the direct consequence of my entire life and all my work.
In the most difficult moments, during the interwar period, Picasso made truly risky political decisions.
87. Everything you can imagine is real.
A hymn to the powers of the human will.
88. Others have seen what it is and asked why. I’ve seen what it could be and asked why not.
A true visionary.
89. Good artists copy, great artists steal.
A quite revolutionary definition of an artist.
90. The main enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.
Picasso was a revolutionary artist and that sometimes means disregarding established conventions.
91. We don’t get older, we break down.
A very pessimistic view of the passage of time.
92. Everything is a miracle. It’s a miracle one doesn’t dissolve in the bath like a sugar cube.
At times Picasso marveled at the world around him.
93. Give me a museum and I will fill it.
In his time, Picasso was the most famous and prestigious artist in the world.
94. I have become a communist because our party strives more than any other to know and build up the World, turning men into clearer, freer and happier thinkers.
Picasso had the firm intention of changing the world and achieving a better Spain.
95. Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.
If we want to succeed like Picasso did, sometimes we have to go down paths that no one has taken.
96. I have never felt freer or more complete than since I entered.
In his time, this is how he referred to his entry into the Communist Party.
97. It takes a long time to become young.
Youth is an attitude.
98. Einstein’s genius leads to Hiroshima.
A devastating reality that helps us understand the first half of the 20th century.
99. I start with an idea and then it turns into something else.
This great artist was able to change art thanks to his revolutionary ideas.
100. Work is a necessity for human beings. Human beings invented the alarm clock.
Acid criticism of work and the social conventions associated with it.
101. The older you get, the stronger the wind becomes, and it’s always in your face.
The passage of time was one of his great obsessions.
102. Today’s world doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?
His opinion of the time he lived in was not very flattering.
103. Why do two colors, placed next to each other, sing? Can this really be explained? No. Just as one can never learn to paint.
His art was truly ineffable, you have to feel it, not understand it.
104. The more technique you have, the less you will have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.
This artist managed to be the best artist in the world at a very young age, which allowed him to forget everything he knew and explore new paths.
105. People who make art their business are mostly impostors.
Criticism of artists whose only motivation is money.
106. There are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats.
An assessment that today would be called sexist.
107. The disciples be condemned. It is not interesting. Only the teachers matter. Those who believe.
Picasso was the great master of the 20th century.
108. You shouldn’t always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.
Faced with as many questions and interviews as they asked him, it is understandable that he invented some answers.
109. Your work in life is the ultimate seduction.
A plea in favor of vitality and working on what one is passionate about.
110. He who thinks he can, can. He who thinks he can’t, he can’t.
There is no other rule in life.
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PsychologyFor. (2024). The 110 Best Phrases of Pablo Picasso. https://psychologyfor.com/the-110-best-phrases-of-pablo-picasso/