Truth exists; only lies are invented.
Art is a wound turned into light.
Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.
The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared.
Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
Art is polymorphic. A picture appears to each onlooker under a different guise.
If we had never met Picasso, would Cubism have been what it is? I think not. The meeting with Picasso was a circumstance in our lives.
Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.
It is not sufficient that what one paints should be made visible. It must be made tangible.
The space between the dish and the pitcher, that I paint also.
Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.
Emotion should not be rendered by an excited trembling; it can neither be added on nor be imitated. It is the seed, the work is the flower.
With age, art and life become one.
Art upsets, science reasures.
Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.
You put a blob of yellow here, and another at the further edge of the canvas: straight away a rapport is established between them. Colour acts in the way that music does...
I considered that the painter’s personality should be kept out of things, and therefore pictures should be anonymous. It was I who decided that pictures should not be signed, and for a time Picasso did the same.
One has to arrive at a specific temperature, at which the objects become malleable.
I realized that one cannot reveal oneself without mannerism, without some evident trace of one’s personality. But all the same one should not go too far in that direction...