Pablo Picasso Painting Quotations

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

One must act in painting as in life, directly.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite -- that particular peach is but a detail.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

When we did Cubist paintings, our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets followed our endeavour attentively but they never dictated it to us.

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.

When I am finished painting, I paint again for relaxation.

An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.

A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder

Painting is a jeu d'esprit.

Even if the painting is green, well then! The 'subject' is the green. There is always a subject; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible.

Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty.

Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches. I search constantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research.

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.

Painting isn't made for the decoration of apartments; it is a weapon to be used offensively and defensively against the enemy.

I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.