Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer. He is known as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He co-founded the Cubist movement and developed a variety of styles in his work.
His most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937). Check out these 20 quotes in which he shares his artistic principles, thoughts on creativity, and the beauty of being an artist.
Art Cleanses Your Soul
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“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Your Calling
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“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
Do What You Love
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“Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.”
Art Reveals the Truth
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“Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.”
Break the Rules Like an Artist
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“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
On Imagination
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“Everything you can imagine is real.”
Learning to Be Youthful at Heart
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“The first half of life is learning to be an adult-the second half is learning to be a child.”
Every Expert Begins Somewhere
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“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
On Art and Children
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“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
Art Is to Be Felt
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“Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?”
Sun With a Thousand Rays
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“When it comes right down to it, all you have is your self. Your Self is a sun with a thousand rays.”
Music and Art
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“Music and art are the guiding lights of the world.”
There Is No Timeline
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“It is important to remember that great things have no fear of time. We’ve got to let go of the idea that what we want to manifest has to be done on our time schedule.”
Artists Are Indestructible
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“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 on the dusty floor of my cell.”
Artists Paint What They Feel
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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.”
The Artist Transforms Mundane Life
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“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”
Pour Your Energy Into Art
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“Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it… myself included.”
On Manifesting
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“Manifesting takes place from Spirit. It doesn’t take place from form, from the physical world. You’ve got to know that what you want to manifest will occur.”
The First Draft Is the Best
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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.”
Art Is Therapeutic
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“A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.”