Pablo Picasso could draw like a professional artist by the time he was thirteen. His father was an art teacher. He supposedly looked at his son's work and handed over his own paintbrushes, saying the boy had surpassed him. So why did someone that talented choose to create art where faces looked like shattered mirrors? Picasso, who died on April 8, 1973, spent his career constantly changing how he made art. But his biggest breakthrough came around 1907, when he helped invent a style called Cubism. In Cubist paintings, objects are broken into shapes and shown from multiple angles at the same time. A face might show the front and the side view simultaneously. Picasso believed that traditional painting only showed one perspective -- the way things look from a single spot. He wanted to show the whole truth, not just one angle. Over his lifetime, Picasso created more than 50,000 works of art. His painting *Guernica* shows the bombing of a Spanish town during a civil war. It became one of the most powerful antiwar images ever made.
Today in Arts
April 8, 1973
Why did an artist who could paint perfectly decide to break all the rules instead?
Pablo Picasso could draw like a professional artist by the time he was thirteen.
1 min read 6 words to know
Argentina. Revista Vea y Lea / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Words to Know
professional constantly breakthrough simultaneously perspective antiwar