Pablo Picasso: Trending quotes (page 2)

Quoted in: Scott Slater, ‎Alec Solomita (1980), Exits: stories of dying moments & parting words. p. 8.
Slater & Solomita (1980) explained:
"It was a spirited dinner and Picasso a cheerful, genial host. After the meal, while pouring wine into a friend's glass, Picasso said, Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more. A little later, about 11:30 P.M., he left his guests, saying, And now I must go back to work. He was up painting until 3:00 A.M. That morning Picasso woke at 11:30, unable to move. By 11:40 he was dead..".
1970s

Health , Drink

“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

Quote (1964); as quoted in Picasso and Company (trans. 1966) by Gyula Brassaï
1960s

Time , Drawing

“I was thinking about Casagemas's death that started me painting in blue.”

Pablo Picasso

Quoted in Pierre Daix, La Vie de Peintre de Pablo Picasso, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977.
Picasso explained his friend Pierre Daix (around 1965), why he started painting in blue early around 1905. Picasso had made a portrait of Carles Casagemas in 1899.
1970s
Original: C’est en passant que Casagemas était mort que je me suis mis à piendre en bleu

Death , Thinking , Painting

“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.”

Pablo Picasso

Boisgeloup, winter 1934
Richard Friedenthal, (1963, pp. 257-258).
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

Art , Idea , Thinking , Appearance

“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

Richard Friedenthal, (1963, p. 260).
1930s, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

Dreams , Fashion , Understanding , Sense

“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

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 323.

Life , Art , Way , Thinking

“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…”

Pablo Picasso

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's

Love , Art , Painting , Falseness

“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

Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 267)
Other translation:
Formerly pictures used to move towards completion in progressive stages. Each day would bring something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.
Richard Friedenthal (1968, p. 256); Also quoted in: John Bowker (1988), Is anybody out there?: religions and belief in God in the contemporary world. p. 57.
1930s, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

“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

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 319.

People , Books , School , Understanding

“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

Quote in My Galleries and Painters, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, New York Viking Press, 1971, p. 46
Picasso in a talk c. 1955, with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
Quotes, 1950's

War , World

“People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.”

Pablo Picasso

Quoted in Picasso on Art (1988), ed. Dore Ashton.
Attributed from posthumous publications

People , Tree

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.”

Pablo Picasso

Quoted in: The Artist, Vol. 93 (1978) p. 5.
1970s

Success , Success

“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…”

Pablo Picasso

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 312
Quotes, 1920's