THE MAN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD THROUGH ART

Table of Contents

PABLO PICASSO

When you look at a child's drawing, you see the sun is a yellow circle with lines shooting out; the house is a square with a triangle on top, it is simple, innocent, and that is how we were taught to see the world before we learn to truly look at it. Then, we grow up, we are told to colour inside the lines we are told that things must look a certain way to be right, we learn the rules, and for most of us, that is where the story ends. We spend our lives trying to perfectly replicate the world we think we see.

Then came Pablo Picasso, he did not just change art; he took a crowbar to the cage of human perception and pried it open; he did not just give us a new way to paint; he gave us a new way to think. He showed us that perspective is a choice. For centuries, Western art was a window, it was a single, fixed view of the world, captured from one spot at one moment, it was what we believed was the truth.

Pablo Picasso with Georges Braque invented Cubism, that shattered the single point of view. They painted the idea of the subject, not just the appearance, they showed us that there is no single truth, there are only perspectives, and you have the power to choose which one to show the world.

In life, if you are facing a problem, a setback, or a challenge, stop looking at the problem only from one angle. Walk around it, look at it from all possible angles, there is a solution you have not seen yet because you have not moved. Picasso gave us permission to be unfinished. As a boy, he could paint like a Renaissance master before he turned twenty, he had mastered the rules, he could paint a realistic portrait that would make your heart ache with its beauty; but he abandoned it all. He chose to paint like a child again, not out of regression, but out of revolution. He dared to be raw, to be ugly, to be confusing. He chose the messy, chaotic energy of creation over the sterile perfection of replication, he understood that mastery is not the end; it is the starting line.

Picasso painted Guernica in response to the bombing of a defenseless town; it is not a painting of planes and bombs, it is a painting of screaming mothers, dying horses, and broken bodies. It is a visual scream against the horror of war. He used his gift not just to decorate the world, but to change the conversation. He proved that art is not a luxury; it is a necessity, it is a weapon, it is a mirror held up to society, forcing us to look at our own ugliness.

You have a voice, you have a gift, don't just use it to decorate your own life, use it to make a statement, to stand for something, to challenge the darkness. Picasso shows us that creation, in the face of destruction, is the ultimate act of defiance. He did not change the world by painting it the way it was; he changed it by painting it the way he felt it; he changed it by daring to see it differently.

365 men who changed the world.

Kamikun John, Author 366 days of wisdom.