Since the dawn of time, humans have been making and admiring art. These art quotations are a celebration of art’s beauty and ingenuity.
Art has the ability to capture a moment in time and stir up our emotions, whether it’s an old cave painting, the work of the legendary Old Masters of the Renaissance, or the cutting edge of Modern Art.
So take a look at these famous painters’ art quotations and be inspired to make the world a more beautiful place today.
80+ Art Quotes to Encourage Creativity
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.__André Gide
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.___Georgia O’Keeffe
Everything you can imagine is real.― Pablo Picasso
Art is a way of recognizing oneself.–Louise Bourgeois
…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?__Vincent Van Gogh
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.― Pablo Picasso
Every artist was first an amateur.___Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be an artist is to believe in life.___Henry Moore
I dream my painting and I paint my dream.― Vincent Willem van Gogh
Art is coming face to face with yourself. – Jackson Pollock
Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.― Rainbow Rowell
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.__Thomas Merton
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.___Edgar Degas
Art is never finished, only abandoned.___Leonardo da Vinci
Art is to console those who are broken by life.__Vincent Van Gogh
Art is what you can get away with. – Andy Warhol
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.___Banksy
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.__Pablo Picasso
Quotes about Art
The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.___Paul Cézanne
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.___James Baldwin
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.― Leonardo da Vinci
One eye sees, the other feels.__Paul Klee
Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.__Rembrandt
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.__Michelangelo
Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.― Clive Barker
Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.___Albert Einstein
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.__Neil Gaiman
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.___Scott Adams
Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.___Claude Monet
I paint flowers so they will not die.___Frida Kahlo
What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.― Karl Lagerfeld
Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.__Leonardo da Vinci
Creativity takes courage.___Henri Matisse
We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.― Bob Ross
Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.___Keith Haring
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.__Pablo Picasso
Art is not a thing, it is a way. – Elbert Hubbard
Creativity takes courage. ― Henri Matisse
Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.___Albert Einstein
A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.__Paul Cézanne
If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.― John Lennon
Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.___Banksy
I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.__Frida Kahlo
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.― Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
A true masterpiece does not tell everything. – Albert Camus
A work is finished when an artist realizes his intentions.___Rembrandt
Without tradition art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation it is a corpse.__Winston Churchill
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.___Leonardo da Vinci
To draw you must close your eyes and sing.___Pablo Picasso
He took his pain and turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that’s what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you.― Hannah Harrington
Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today.___Salvador Dalí
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.__Edward Hopper
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.___Friedrich Nietzsche
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.___Alberto Giacometti
Art deteriorates when it is done for the audience.___James Pierce
Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind.___Magdalena Abakanowicz
The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. – Jerzy Kosiński
And now, I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time.― Lady Gaga
Art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.___Rainbow Rowell
Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.___Agnes Martin
Art is my life and my life is art.___Yoko Ono
Art must destroy violence, only it can do it.___Leo Tolstoy
From Artists
Art is a line around your thoughts. – Gustav Klimt
I shut my eyes in order to see.___Paul Gauguin
I must have flowers, always, and always.__Claude Monet
I couldn’t give you something mediocre even if that’s all you asked for.___Michelangelo
In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better.__Ernest Hemingway
Obsessive people make great art. – Susan Sontag
Art is the expression of the profoundest thoughts in the simplest way.___Albert Einstein
We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.___John F. Kennedy
If I close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open.___Henri Matisse
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.___Oscar Wilde
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.___Michelangelo
Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.___Andy Warhol
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.__John F. Kennedy
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.__Georges Braque
The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship.___Rick Rubin
Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.___Leonardo da Vinci
Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.___Leon Trotsky
What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.___Marcel Duchamp