Where Did Pablo Picasso's Genius Come From? | National Geographic

Where does genius come from? Pablo Picasso's journey to genius began with a puff of his uncle Salvador's cigar, so claims the man himself. It's possible this puff ignited what some historians call the rage to master: a voracious dedication to push the boundaries of one's craft. This obsessive personality led Picasso down a lifelong path of bucking established traditions.

"I am not in favor of following any determined school because that only brings about similarity among adherents." When Picasso moved to Paris at the age of 22, he fell in with like-minded Bohemians like Richard Stein and Henri Matisse. From this creative cauldron emerged perhaps Picasso's most famous contribution to art history: a radical style called Cubism, with displaced noses and mouths and characteristic irregular forms. Cubism nicely encapsulated Picasso's aesthetic or view: "A picture used to be a sum of additions; with me, a picture is a sum of destructions."

So it was throughout his career; Picasso constantly reinvented his style at a rapid pace. He created thousands of innovative sculptures, drawings, matches, ceramics, and paintings. Neuroscientists have discovered that imagery like Picasso's invites viewers into the creative process, with the artist's flair for taking incomplete clues in the missing details. Picasso had an instinct for this dynamic long before science corroborated it. "The picture leaves only to the man who is looking at it."