How did I miss that Pablo Picasso did light drawings? LIFE Magazine has a wonderful collection of photos showing Picasso creating light drawings. I apologize if you have already seen this, but I didn’t realize that Picasso was an early light drawing artist. From my earliest years of drawing, I have always been in awe of Picasso’s work. It is exciting to see work by him that is so new to me and I am astounded at how ahead of his time these are.
LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso’s mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.
Make sure you see all of Picasso’s light drawings on LIFE, especially if you have not seen them before.
