“Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.”

Spanish painter and sculptor

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor who spent most of his adult life in France. Born in 1881 and active until his death in 1973, he became one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He is especially known for co-founding Cubism and for helping shape several major developments in modern art. His work ranged widely across styles, and he helped pioneer constructed sculpture and collage. Among his best-known paintings are Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, begun in 1907, and Guernica, completed in 1937 as a response to the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.