The following phrases by Picasso about art and life are a true reflection of his dimension as a person, intellectual and artist. In them you will discover his particular conception of reality , his passion for life and his commitment to culture and politics.
- You can also read: 50 phrases of art and artists to find inspiration.
Who was Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) was a Spanish painter internationally recognized for his genius in avant-garde art during the first half of the 20th century. His political commitment to the left and the link between his art and the vicissitudes of his time marked his artistic and intellectual profile.
The movement in which his art is ascribed, cubism, as a form of abstract art and surrealism, was the artistic response to the absurdity of his historical time, the Europe between the wars, in which the moral values of an entire civilization.
His most famous painting, Guernica, painted after the destruction of the town of Guernica by fascist aviation, isthe maximum expression of how art can respond to the cruelties of its time. That is why Picasso understood art as a weapon.
In addition, he was a passionate being and in love with life .
Picasso’s phrases about art and inspiration
The most important thing for a painter like Picasso who abhorred aesthetic canons was precisely the inspiration that allows the artist to express himself.
1. Inspiration exists, but you have to find yourself working.
One of Picasso’s great phrases about art and inspiration, which claims work as the main source of success.
2. Action is the fundamental key to all success.
No matter how much creativity and genius one has,what really counts is the will to put it into practice.
3. You don’t make art, you find it.
With this phrase, Picasso expressed the magic of art , by which the painter is only a medium that channels the true genius and captures it on the canvas.
4. Everything is a miracle.
“…It’s a miracle that one doesn’t melt in the bathroom,” ironized the genius.
5. Without real solitude, no serious work is possible.
Solitude is for Picasso the necessary condition for the exercise of introspection necessary to create.
6. Painting is stronger than me, it forces me to do it.
Art as a necessity, not as a job.
7. People who make art their business are impostors.
A romantic image of art that prioritizes its purity and meaning over its lucrative aspect. The artist must follow his convictions, not end up being a commercial product.
8. I do not seek, I find.
The genius feels infused with an inspiring light that turns into art through action.
9. Computers are useless, they only give answers.
In this case, however, he speaks of the need for the search as something more important than the answers.
10. I don’t want to be modern, I want to be eternal.
One of those bombastic phrases from one of those exceptional geniuses above good and evil.
11. Art is dangerous. When it is chaste, it is not art.
Art is a means to express the struggles of man, not to please others.
12. Art is a finger in the ass of the bourgeoisie.
He uses a scatological and irreverent expression to defend his idea of art as protest.
13. Your Being is a sun with a thousand rays.
It is an inspiring phrase in which Picasso values the power that each one of us has within ourselves.
14. Our goals can only be achieved through a plan.
In this plan, according to the artist, we must act with energy and confidence, walk with faith and determination towards success .
15. Everything exists in limited quantity, especially happiness.
Philosophical phrase that invites us to squeeze life to the fullest, because everything is temporary.
16. Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
Inspiring phrase that invites the freedom of the artist as a fundamental principle .
17. Look for a situation in which your work brings you as much happiness as your free time.
Picasso thus reflected on the dichotomy between work and happiness .
18. Copying yourself is pathetic.
Picasso abhorred the production of art as a commodity. For him, each work of art has to be a new world.
19. My hand tells me what I am thinking.
For the artist, art does not flow from his rational thought of it but from sensations.
20. The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about.
For Picasso, “the more technique you have, the less there is”. An unsightly claim.
21. We all know that Art is not true.
For Picasso, art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
22. The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from everywhere: from heaven, from earth, from a piece of paper.
Inspiration lives in every experience , in every object, we just have to open ourselves to it and be receptive to everything that moves around us.
23. Go and do the things you can’t. This is how you can do them.
It is both a phrase that describes the essence of abstract art and an inspiring phrase that invites us to always pursue our ambitions .
24. Give me a museum and I will fill it.
The life of the artist has to be a challenge to work constantly. With that energy Picasso approached life.
25. Love is the best snack in life.
For the artist from Malaga, love has always been part of his way of conceiving life and the world.
26. What one does is what he counts, not what he intended to do.
That is why it is necessary to work hard, and put inspiration at the service of its execution.
27. Whoever thinks they can can, and whoever thinks they can’t can’t. This is an inexorable law.
Picasso always thought that man is a powerful being who can do anything, with faith and determination .
28. He only postpones until tomorrow what you are willing to leave before you die.
We only live today, the present, and we have to put all our effort into it.
Picasso’s phrases about art and reality
The avant-garde broke with the traditional aesthetic concept and promoted a new concept of art based on the importance of the concept.
28. Imagination is real.
The limits of reality are subjective and abstract , that’s why abstract art is the closest thing to reality.
29. An idea is a starting point, and nothing more. As soon as you make it, it becomes thought.
Picasso believes that man cannot escape the rational process of all ideas, but that the original idea is the one that contains the most sense .
30. Painting is a blind man’s profession. The painter does not paint what he sees, but what he feels.
The senses are what transmit inspiration to the painter, and he must capture it as it is on the canvas, without processing it through reason.
31. If I paint a horse, you may not see the horse, but you will surely see the madness.
A well-known phrase by Picasso that reflects on surrealism and cubism as exponents of abstraction.
32. People want to find meaning in everything. It is the disease of our times.
Picasso raises abstraction to a sign of intelligence and reviles realism as an expression of mediocrity.
33. I paint objects as I think of them, not as I see them.
Art is the processing of reality through the filter of the artist’s thought .
34. You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
For Picasso, the initial idea is just an orientation, but true art is improvisation .
35. If we could remove our brain and use only our eyes…
Picasso is expressing, as a lament, the impossibility of detaching ourselves from the rational aspect.
36. To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.
The form does not matter, only all the soul that you can spontaneously give to your work.
37. What is more abstract may be the summit of reality.
A paradox to demonstrate that the essence of abstract art is to describe an absurd reality .
38. Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them.
For the cubist painter, abstract art is nothing more than the expression of nature.
39. I start with an idea and then it becomes something else.
The important thing in a work of art is the evolution of its execution, in which the soul of the artist shapes it until the final result .
40. If I don’t have red, I use blue.
A new phrase of contempt for aesthetic canons.
41. Oh, good taste! What a horrible thing!
According to Picasso, “taste is the enemy of creativity”. It is a clearly provocative phrase against the bourgeois concept of art .
42. There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who transform a yellow spot into the sun.
The true meaning of art has to be to fill the form with content , and not to give form to the content.
43. The main enemy of creativity is common sense.
To give free rein to our creative impulses we have to do without Reason as much as possible.
44. Why do you try to understand art
“Are you trying to understand the song of a bird
”, said Picasso, comparing art with the expression of nature.
45. Others have seen what it is and asked why. I have seen what it could be, and I have asked why not.
Picasso hated the recurring need to find a why for everything , because according to him it is a way of limiting the potential of what can become.
46. Everything you can imagine is real.
There are no limits to the imagination, as if there are, however, in reality.
47. Every act of creation is, above all, an act of destruction.
One of his best known phrases because it contains his true conception of art, what today we would call “deconstruction” of reality.
48. There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them differently.
It is always necessary to open the mind to other perspectives, to other ways of seeing things .
49. Colors, with their characteristics, follow the change of emotions.
The work evolves in the same way that the soul of the artist and his emotions, his feelings, his thoughts are molded.
Picasso phrases about art and beauty
By distorting reality, surrealist painters reformulated the traditional concept of beauty. Discover phrases about art and beauty, the complex elaboration of an entire philosophy around what is understood as beautiful.
50. All art is erotic.
Picasso always had an erotic and sexual conception of art , because for art and sex they are pure aspects of the human essence.
51. Bad artists copy, good artists steal.
Copying is very easy, the important thing is to absorb the best of others and turn it into something better.
52. Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
An obtuse and somewhat disturbing phrase that actually wants to warn us ofthe need for the artist to capture the essentials of life.
53. Sex and art are the same.
He compares art to sex as a form of physical and spiritual expression , as a passion through which many answers are found.
54. Music and art are the lights that guide the world.
Picasso’s quote on art and beauty, on art as illumination.
55. In drawing, nothing is better than the first try.
It is vain to try to perfect an original work , because the first stroke contains all the essence (and beauty) of what was wanted to be expressed.
56. You have to know how to be vulgar.
Art has a touch of vulgarity, because its beauty stems from its irreverent content.
57. Who sees the human face correctly: a photographer, the mirror or the
painter This is how Picasso wonders if the painter is not really the only one capable of capturing the human soul.
58. The purpose of art is to wash the dust of everyday life from our souls.
The artist from Malaga believed that the beauty of art is in its renewing and cathartic power .
59. The impulse to destroy is also a creative impulse.
When we want to destroy something we carry within us the dream of something new.
60. There is no abstract art, it must always start with someone.
Then, said Picasso, all traces of reality are eliminated.
61. God is really just another artist.
I saw it asan abstract artist who continuously experiments creating different things without his own style: giraffes, cats, elephants…
62. Sculpture is the art of intelligence.
A very profound phrase that says a lot about his way of understanding art: painting offers the possibility of improvisation and genius, but sculpture is molded through the intellect.
63. From time to time a picture is painted that seems to have opened a door and serves as a springboard for other things.
The beauty of art lies in the fact that it is an inexhaustible source of inspiration , and from one work another can always come out.
64. Why do two colors placed side by side sing
Picasso says that this question has no answer, just as one can never learn to paint.
65. Painting is not made to decorate apartments.
This is how Picasso spoke of art when he was asked about Guernika. Art, he said, is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy .
66. There is nothing more difficult than a line.
A line can be as easy or as difficult as we want, because the important thing is not the line, but the content that we give it.
67. I am a woman. Every artist is a woman, and she must like other women.
A feminist conception of art, since Picasso believed that true art can only be understood from the eyes of the female soul.
68. Academic training in beauty is a farce.
According to Pablo Ruiz Picasso, learning is a limitation of the true freedom of the artist.
69. When we love a woman, we don’t start measuring her legs.
The beauty is not in the canons, but in the depth of the soul, where we have to explore introspectively.
70. I understand how people see things in the roots of a tree. But in marble?
It comes in blocks and doesn’t inspire anything.
Sometimes what seems most beautiful has no content.
71. The Parthenon is a farmyard where someone built a roof.
This is how Picasso defined one of the most important architectural works in the world, as a work in permanent construction due to the need of artists to express themselves.
72. Fame is God’s punishment for the artist.
When he is an artist he becomes famous he stops producing what he really wants, he stops creating beauty.
73. Museums are just a lot of lies.
According to him, since Art is a lie, museums are nothing more than the place where these lies are exposed. The truth is in the picture.
74. Drawing is a kind of hypnotism.
Art is beauty to the extent that it can capture what lies in the depths of the soul .
75. People who talk about beautiful things scare me. what is beautiful
One must talk about problems in the painting.
Art has to be the measure of the complexity of the human soul and society .
Picasso’s phrases about art and life
For Picasso, the artist’s life was linked to his personal life and his political thought, and for this reason he accompanied his work with a whole philosophy of life.
76. Paradise is loving many things with passion.
Love is the great engine that moves the world and the action of men , and happiness is only found when passion is given free rein.
77. Painting is just another way to keep a journal.
Picasso reflects on the importance of art as introspective therapy.
78. The first half of life is learning to be an adult. The second half is learning to be a child.
A very philosophical phrase about the cycles of life and the importance of returning to the origins.
79. When he was a child he drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw as a child.
A very profound phrase that sums up abstract art: aesthetics is a limit to true and pure artistic expression.
80. We have not learned anything in twelve thousand years.
This is how he expressed himself leaving the caves of Lascaux, in France, amazed .
81. I would like to live like a poor man with a lot of money.
An ironic phrase that actually recognizes theimpossibility of having money and maintaining the purity of spirit of the poor.
82. Youth has no age.
Optimistic and vitalist phrase that invites you not to let yourself be wrinkled by the passing of the years.
83. I’m just a public artist who has understood his time.
This is how Picasso defined himself, as an artist who had become famous playing: for him, abstract art was the expression of an absurd time.
84. We do not age, we become more mature.
The passage of time has to be an exploited factor , a value full of content.
85. One must act in painting as in life, directly.
Direct action and fidelity to one’s own convictions have to mark the action of a man.
86. I am a communist and my painting is communist
Art, life and politics are three inseparable elements, and the artist’s commitment must be equally firm with all three.
87. I don’t believe in accidents.
For Picasso coincidences in history do not exist, everything happens for a reason.
88. We artists are indestructible.
“Even in a prison or a concentration camp, he would be almighty in my art world.” An inspiring phrase about the power of the artist .
89. What do you think he is an artist?
A political being, constantly aware.
Picasso always understood the artist as a being committed to his time and his society.
90. I became a painter and ended up like Picasso.
He talks about his vital evolution linked to his artistic evolution.
91. It takes a long time to be young.
Finding the true value of youth, which is impetus and freedom, is the result of a long process of maturity.
92. The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
Art, like any vocation, is the result of having found the true purpose in life.
93. I am always doing what I cannot do, so that I can learn to do it.
Art is like life, we can only achieve good results if we violate the canons.
94. Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form that has some connection to the visible world.
Picasso saw his work as something useful in the fight against injustice , as a weapon to fight and make a better world.
95. We constantly move dust from one place to another, only for it to be replaced by more dust: entropy always wins.
One of the most philosophical phrases of Picasso about the meaning of life. It will make you think…
96. People who read are people who dream.
Picasso attached great importance to reading as a source of imagination.
97. The manifestation takes place from the Spirit.
An expression that shows the most mystical side of Picasso, the deepest side of him thathe always gave priority to substance before form .
98. When German soldiers would come to my studio they would say, “Did you do that
”, and I would say, “No, you did”.
Art is the embodiment of reality, and Picasso’s art is linked to his time.
99. Unfortunately, I use things as my passion dictates.
The artist sees a compromise in fidelity to his impulses, but sometimes it causes him problems.
100. When they say that I am too old to do something, I try to do it right away.
This was Picasso, a lover of life who wanted to squeeze it to the last second .
- It may interest you: 35 Frida Kahlo phrases about life, love and art.
