Pablo Picasso

Hello there. My name is Pablo Picasso, and I am famous for being an artist who loved to paint in new and exciting ways. My story begins in a sunny city in Spain called Málaga, where I was born on October 25, 1881. My family loved to tell a funny story about me. They said that my very first word wasn't 'mama' or 'papa,' but 'piz.' That's a short way of saying 'lápiz,' which is the Spanish word for pencil. From the very beginning, I wanted to draw.

My father, José, was also an artist and a professor of art, so he was my very first teacher. He showed me how to mix colors and how to look at the world with an artist's eyes. I spent hours and hours drawing. I especially loved watching the pigeons that cooed and fluttered on the plaza outside our home. I would try to draw their round bodies and soft feathers over and over again until I got them just right. To me, a pencil and a piece of paper were the best toys in the world.

When I grew up, I moved to the big, beautiful city of Paris in France. It was filled with artists, music, and new ideas. I knew I wanted to create something that no one had ever seen before. For a while, I was feeling a bit sad, and all my paintings showed it. I used every shade of blue you can imagine—sky blue, deep ocean blue, and stormy blue. People now call this my Blue Period. But soon, my heart felt lighter, and my paintings changed, too. I started using warm and happy colors like pinks, oranges, and reds. This was my Rose Period, and I loved painting pictures of circus families and performers.

Then, one day, my good friend Georges Braque and I had a fantastic idea. We asked ourselves, 'Why do we only have to show one side of something in a painting?' We wanted to show every side all at once. So, around the year 1907, we started an art style called Cubism. We painted people and guitars and tables using lots of simple shapes like squares, triangles, and circles. It was like taking something apart and putting it back together like a puzzle so you could see the front, back, and sides all at the same time. It was a brand-new way of seeing, and it changed art forever.

I didn't just paint with a brush. I was an inventor of art. I would walk around and find interesting objects, like an old bicycle seat and handlebars, and I put them together to make a sculpture that looked like a bull's head. I loved to get my hands messy with clay, too, shaping it into beautiful plates, vases, and funny owls. I believed that art could be made from anything. I never stopped creating for my entire life, making thousands of artworks.

In 1937, I painted a very large and important painting called Guernica. It is mostly black, white, and gray, and it shows my sad feelings about war. I used my art to tell the world that we should all live in peace. Art was my voice. It was how I shared my joy, my sadness, and my dreams with everyone. Remember, art is all about your imagination. So go ahead, grab some crayons and paper, and show the world what's in your heart. You are an artist, too.