There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty...

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Now there is fame! Of all — hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public — fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is...

I want to live like a poor man with lots of money.

Taste is the enemy of creativeness

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous.

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.

If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!

When they tell me I’m too old to do something, I attempt it immediately.

Disciples be damned. It’s not interesting. It’s only the masters that matter. Those who create.

There’s nothing so similar to one poodle dog as another poodle dog, and that goes for women, too

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

The world today doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

To draw you must close your eyes and sing.

I do not seek. I find.

Drink to me.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some...

I’d like to live like a poor man with lots of money

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in...

What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue...

My mother said to me, ”If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general; if you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso....

One starts to get young at sixty, and then it’s too late

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing

Give me a museum and I’ll fill it.

I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.

I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs...

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary

To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic

We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.

Are we to paint what’s on the face, what’s inside the face, or what’s behind it?

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Good artists copy; great artists steal.

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.

Basically the French are all peasants.

Now there is fame! Of all / hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public / fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is...

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” ― Pablo Picasso

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make...

When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end up with an egg.

Drink to me

To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved.