Guernica Quotes

If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.

One should refer to things by their accurate designation. What is happening right now in Vietnam is a form of torture. That is why the bombings are an infamy. Of such there are many in modern history. They are often linked by name: Guernica, Oradour, Babij Jar, Katyn, Lidice, Sharpeville and Treblinka. Now there is another name to add to the row: Hanoi, the Christmas of 1972.

Art is important because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guernica.' People would not remember the tragedy of Guernica today if it were not for that painting.

All of a sudden I got a vision of Guernica - Pablo Picasso's painting, which is one of my all-time favorite paintings in the world. I remember reading that it was very controversial at the time - some people said even used the word "childlike drawing" - and all of a sudden I thought, "This is like Guernica in Los Angeles!" And then it all made sense to me. It was all the elements that are the Southland.

I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began.

Pablo Picasso first entered my consciousness when I was a boy of about eight years old.

A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist «chaos» of the painting, asked Picasso: «Did you do this?» Picasso calmly replied: «No, you did this!»

The true symbolism of every facet of 'Guernica' can only be guessed at, but we do know that it haunted Picasso.

Picasso was a delightful, kindly, friendly, simple little man. When I met him he was extremely excited and overjoyed that his mother-in-law had just died, and he was looking forward to the funeral.

No military tactic is unreasonable if it can further destroy enemy morale and quickly.

Picasso is a character that has pursued me for a long time and I always rejected. He deserves a lot of respect because I am from Malaga, and I was born four blocks from where he was born.

As a Catholic priest, I state that no worse outrage could be inflicted on religion than the Te Deum to be sung to the glory of [Spanish Dictator] Franco in the church at Guernica …

When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my pictures of Guernica, they'd ask 'Did you do this?'. And I'd say, 'No, you did.'

My first influence obviously was Picasso.

Picasso was hugely innovative, and, wow, did he have facility, amazing ability, but I don't think he painted a masterpiece.

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.

Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s - the Spanish Civil War, for example, though I was barely literate.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and knowing nothing about Picasso, I had the audacity to knock on his door, became his friend, and took thousands of photographs, of him, his studios, his life and his friends.

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).