Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Associated primarily with ground-breaking and game-changing Cubism, alongside Georges Braque, Picasso also made substantial contributions to Symbolism and Surrealism.

When he was born, Picasso was such a weak baby that the midwife thought that he was dead and left him on a table to attend his mother. His uncle, a doctor named Don Salvador, was the one that saved him.

Doctors at that time used to smoke big cigars, and my uncle was no exception. When he saw me lying there he blew smoke into my face. To this I immediately reacted with a grimace and a bellow of fury – Picasso once said.

He was a rebel from the start and soon moved from Spain to Paris where he soaked up the works of Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec, whose sketchy style impressed him immensely. Before he struck upon Cubism, Picasso went through a number of styles – realism, caricature, the Blue Period, and the Rose Period. Inspired by French artist Paul Cézanne, Picasso and Georges Braque started painting landscapes in the style that critics later called “bizarreries cubiques” (cubic oddities), which gave the movement name Cubism. Picasso was a pioneer with a hand in every art movement of the century.

However, he is not only famous for his work – but he was also an incorrigible womanizer. The extraordinary energy which he devoted to his oeuvre can only be matched by the energy with wich he pursued women. They were often his muses who inspired him to create his masterpieces.

Here are some of the most powerful and inspirational Pablo Picasso quotes on art, painters, meaning of life, creativity, and individuality.

1. ON art

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To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules. – Pablo Picasso

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

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The people who make art their business are mostly imposters. – Pablo Picasso

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2. ON PAINTERS AND PAINTINGS



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Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen. – Pablo Picasso

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Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies 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

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3. ON himself



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I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don’t know nor can I do anything else. – Pablo Picasso

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As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes – and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done. – Pablo Picasso

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Give me a museum and I’ll fill it. – Pablo Picasso

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

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For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography. – Pablo Picasso

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If it’s good, it’s mine. If it’s bad, it’s a fake. – Pablo Picasso

4. ON women

5. ON people



6. ON life

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The first half of life is learning to be an adult – the second half is learning to be a child. – Pablo Picasso

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7. ON PHOTOGRAPHerS



8. ON FAME

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Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown. – Pablo Picasso

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If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art. – Pablo Picasso

9. ON INSPIRATION AND PERFECTION

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It’s always necessary to seek for perfection. Obviously, for us, this word no longer has the same meaning. To me, it means: from one canvas to the next, always go further, further… – Pablo Picasso

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10. ON solitude



11. ON god



12. ON computers



13. ON SUCCESS AND TAKING ACTION



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Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility. – Pablo Picasso

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He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law. – Pablo Picasso

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Our goals can only be reached 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. – Pablo Picasso

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To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.

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Everything we can dream can be real. – Pablo Picasso

14. ON creativity and originality

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To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic. – Pablo Picasso

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The urge to destroy is also a creative urge. – Pablo Picasso

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There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes. – Pablo Picasso

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It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction. – Pablo Picasso

15. ON CREATION



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The important thing is to create. Nothing else matters; creation is all. – Pablo Picasso

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If you’re stuck in a painting, then stop and draw something else. Draw a flower and put your love into that flower. Then your powers will come back again. – Pablo Picasso

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16. ON learning new things



17. ON BEAUTY AND GOOD TASTE



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Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to. – Pablo Picasso

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Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs. – Pablo Picasso

Did you know?

If you liked best Pablo Picasso quotes, here are some interesting trivia about his life.

Pablo Picasso was a child prodigy and it was his father Ruiz, an artist and art professor, who recognized Pablo’s amazing talent. His first word was “piz”, what is short of “lápiz”, a Spanish word for “pencil”, by the age of 9, he had finished his first painting, and when he was 13, his father decided he would give up painting because he felt his son already had surpassed him.

In 1911. Pablo Picasso was questioned by the police on whether he stole Mona Lisa. When the famous painting was stolen from the Louvre, the police took in Picasso’s friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who fingered Picasso as a suspect. Both were later released.