What Did the Scandalous Picasso Think About Art? 10 Striking Quotes

We have all seen Pablo Picasso's famous Cubist works — we marvel at them, we admire them, we recoil from them — but how often do we stop to think what the artist himself believed as he painted them? Below you will find 10 fascinating thoughts from Picasso on art.

1. Youth is not an age.

2. Every child is an artist. The difficulty is to remain an artist once we grow up.

3. The greatest enemy of creativity is a "sound" mind.

4. If you want to paint, you must close your eyes and sing.

5. God is really just another artist. He created the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat — he has no real style, he just keeps on trying other things.

6. Finish a work? Finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to kill it, to strip it of its soul, to deal it the death blow — for both the picture and the painter.

7. The purpose of art is to wash the dust of daily life off our souls.

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

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

10. Copying others is necessary — but copying yourself is pitiful.