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 Picasso.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

I am glad to say I have never considered painting simply as pleasure-giving art, a distraction; I have wanted, by drawing and by color since these are my weapons, to penetrate always further forward into the consciousness of the world and of men.

Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule, completely mistaken.

We all know that art is not truth. Art is the lie that makes us realize truth.

We have imposed upon the pictures in the museums all our stupidities, our errors, the pretenses of our spirit. We have made poor ridiculous things of them. We cling to myths instead of sensing the inner life of the men who painted them. There ought to be an absolute dictatorship… a dictatorship of painters… the […]

Those who try to explain a picture are most of the time on the wrong track. Gertrude Stein announced to me joyously some time ago that she had at last understood what my picture represented: three musicians. It was a still life!

What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, or, if he is merely a boxer, only his muscle? On the contrary, he […]