We have to approach art as immediate as that of Picasso in a way that is entirely direct, honest, spontaneous and innocent… What we absolutely must not do is put him on a pedestal like some horror in a cemetery and talk about him as “a great man”: everything about him is alive, in constant movement, refusing to be confined in a lifeless statue. One of the grossest errors propagated about Picasso, and one we hear most often, is the idea that he is something to do with the Surrealists. In fact, in the majority of his paintings, the subject is almost always completely down to earth, never drawn from the dim world of dreams, never capable of being turned into a symbol, in other words not in any way Surrealist. Human limbs, human subjects in human surroundings; that is first and foremost what we find in Picasso.

Michel Leiris, Document 2, 1930.

Nothing can be done without solitude. I have created solitude for myself no-one ever dreams exists. It’s very difficult to be alone nowadays because we have wristwatches. Have you ever seen a saint with a wristwatch? I’ve looked everywhere and I haven’t been able to find a single one, not even on saints who are meant to be the patron saints of clockmakers

Picasso to Tériade, 1932.