One must act in painting as in life, directly. Pablo Picasso
Action is the foundational key to all success. Pablo Picasso
The first time that a modern artist of such stature has taken the A202. Monty Python’s Flying Circus s1e1, BBC 1969
Along the corridor of time is a real genius with a big pen, the biggest pen of all, the pen of Pablo drawing. Matthew Collings, This is Modern Art I, Channel 4 1999
Big Cigar of modernity – Picasso. This is Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. ibid.
He stands for ceaseless creativity, not caring, not being snobbish, having his own system, never being polite. ibid.
Sex and death – Picasso’s great themes. This is a picture of his friend who committed suicide. ibid.
Cubism: it made the painting more important than the picture; it made inventing more important than copying; it meant reality could be gutted and boned and put back together again as something else – as art. ibid.
He didn’t have to care because a big support system of mythology and market was doing all that for him … The system of the modern artist as entrepreneur and showman. ibid.
Guernica had become the icon of modern art’s moral goodness. Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation IV: Uncertainty, BBC 2007
In May 1970 aged 89, 3 years before his death, Pablo Picasso displayed with no frames on bare stone walls a large number of his latest paintings. These crude, raw, provocatively sexual images were met with confusion and disappointment if not horror. Flocking to venerate Picasso, the colossus of modern art, his admirers expected echoes of museum masterpieces ... Had they missed the final statement of artistic genius? Picasso’s Last Stand, BBC 2019
But in his last decade Picasso came under attack on all fronts. ibid.
In his last decade Picasso produced more art works than ever before. ibid.
Picasso’s work was a fusion of observation, memory and fantasy. ibid.
Barcelona gave Picasso the subject to which he would obsessively return. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Spain III: The Mystical North, BBC 2008
In 1900 Paris was capital of the world. A cosmopolitan crowd filled the garden of the Trocadera … everywhere French innovation, invention and ingenuity … The City of Lights, the freest in the world. Les Aventuriers de l’Art Modern [The Adventures of Modern Art] I: Bohemia 1900-1906, Sky Arts 2020
Off the beaten path and far from this excitement, a little village awoke to the dawning of a new century: Montmartre. ibid.
The [Picasso’s] style reflected the poverty and despair in which the small community of Montmartre had been living. ibid.
A new art-form was taking its first steps: Cubism. ibid.
In Montmartre at the beginning of the last century, hedonist artists lived carefree and tumultuous lives. The Adventures of Modern Art 1906-1916 II: Picasso & His Gang
Picasso had a rival: the painter Henri Matisse. ibid.
Until Les Demoiselles d’Avignon few had criticised Picasso’s works. His studio was like a laboratory where ideas, points of view and innovations were exchanged in an extraordinary spirit of artistic camaraderie. ibid.
The most audacious of the bunch was certainly Marcel Duchamp. ibid.
The Bohemian days gave way to a period of separations. ibid.
Everyone was eager to see the Cubists come to auction. ibid.
Picasso penned the diary of his life with a paintbrush. The Adventures of Modern Art IV: Paris: Capital of the World IV
Size matters: this is Tate Modern, the triumphant monster among contemporary art galleries. And with nearly six million visitors a year, it’s in the top ten most visited galleries and museums all around the world. Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr: Picasso’s Weeping Woman, Channel 5 2021
We find a hugely important painting by a giant of modern art whose fame is on an equally vast scale. When asked to name the world’s most famous painter, more than 90% of us choose him … Pablo Picasso: it’s his Weeping Woman, painted in 1937, and nothing quite like it had ever been made before. ibid.
50 years ago the world mourned the death of the greatest living artist in living memory. The death of Pablo Picasso left behind a family in turmoil. He left behind 100,000 artworks capturing a century of war and upheaval. Picasso: The Beauty and the Beast I, captions, BBC 2023
The key to understanding Picasso and his art is understanding his relationships with women. ibid. Philippa Perry
When Picasso arrives in Paris he lives in Montmartre. ibid. historian
Those universal themes of poverty, loneliness, urban life – they’re very urban those pictures. ibid.
Picasso is someone who has strong moods. ibid.
‘I feel we will do great things together.’ And then he said to me, ‘I am Picasso.’ Picasso: The Beauty and the Beast II, Marie-Therese Walter radio interview 1974, on meeting Picasso
He changed the way we see the world. ibid.
Every time he paints, emotional truth is always there. Abhorent at times or not. That’s what gives his work incredible power. ibid. Philippa Perry
In 1937 Picasso produced this extraordinary suite of paintings known as The Weeping Women. ibid. expert
Guernica has to be the greatest anti-war painting. ibid. expert
‘He was very down to earth.’ Picasso: The Beauty and the Beast III, daughter
‘I told him I thought he was the devil.’ ibid. Gilot
In the 1940s and 50s, Picasso appeared in several films documenting his creative process. ibid. caption