Born in Malaga, Spain, Picasso’s many styles and prolific work rate have marked him out as one of the most recognised artists of the twentieth century. Not limited to one medium he created sculptures, etchings and prints. His artistic career only began to boom once he moved to Paris in the early 1900s. His Blue Period, reflecting the colour and his mood at the time was followed by his Rose Period, work inspired by primitive art and then Cubism, which shocked the critics, but ultimately made his name.
Guernica (1937) was created during Picasso’s Surrealist period and captures the horror of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. By the end of World War II, Picasso had become an internationally known artist and celebrity.
More information on Artsy’s Pablo Picasso page
A painting begins and becomes something completely different – It’s strange how little the artist’s wishes actually matter.
A painting is only alive when a person looks at it.
A painting lives its life like a living being, experiencing changes that everyday life imposes.
Accidents, try to change them — it’s impossible. The accidental reveals man.
An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate, it becomes transformed by thought.
Art is never chaste – art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.
Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defence against the enemy.
Art is not the application of a canon of beauty – when we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.
Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
Art ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared.
By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous.
Computers are useless – they can only give you answers!
Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don’t they try to understand the song of the birds?
Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
Everything you can imagine is real.
God is really only another artist, he made the elephant, giraffe and cat. He has no real style but keeps trying new ideas.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
I have never painted anything other than what I have seen and felt.
I look for inspiration in reality – only reality powers my imagination and gives me new life.
I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
I put everything I love in my pictures.
I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
If one knows exactly what is going to be done, why do it?
I’m always seeking.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.