--- title: Pablo Picasso Draws With Light: The Story Behind an Iconic Photo description: Photos of Pablo Picasso -- the 20th century's archetypal creative genius -- crafting simultaneously fleeting and enduring works of art. canonical: https://time.com/3746330/behind-the-picture-picasso-draws-with-light/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-01-29T18:57:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:05:02.901Z og:title: Pablo Picasso Draws With Light: The Story Behind an Iconic Photo og:description: Photos of Pablo Picasso -- the 20th century's archetypal creative genius -- crafting simultaneously fleeting and enduring works of art. og:url: https://time.com/3746330/behind-the-picture-picasso-draws-with-light/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb8ff5f89f74b865c/698783b62dce017b059de0b0/150316-pablo-picasso-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: Pablo Picasso, 1949 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Pablo Picasso Draws With Light: The Story Behind an Iconic Photo twitter:description: Photos of Pablo Picasso -- the 20th century's archetypal creative genius -- crafting simultaneously fleeting and enduring works of art. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb8ff5f89f74b865c/698783b62dce017b059de0b0/150316-pablo-picasso-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Behind the Picture: Picasso 'Draws' With Light > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Jan 29, 2012 6:57 PM UTC  Pablo Picasso "draws" a centaur in the air with light, 1949. Pablo Picasso "draws" a centaur in the air with light, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Jan 29, 2012 6:57 PM UTC When LIFE magazine’s Gjon Mili, a technical prodigy and lighting innovator, visited Pablo Picasso in the South of France in 1949, it was clear that the meeting of these two artists and craftsmen was bound to result in something extraordinary. Mili showed Picasso some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates, jumping in the dark — and the Spanish genius’s ever-stirring mind began to race. “Picasso” LIFE magazine reported at the time, “gave Mili 15 minutes to try one experiment. He was so fascinated by the result that he posed for five sessions, projecting 30 drawings of centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles and his signature. Mili took his photographs in a darkened room, using two cameras, one for side view, another for front view. By leaving the shutters open, he caught the light streaks swirling through space.” This series of photographs, known ever since as Picasso’s “light drawings,” were made with a small electric light in a darkened room; in effect, the images vanished as soon as they were created — and yet they still live, six decades later, in Mili’s playful, hypnotic images. Many of them were also put on display in early 1950 in a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Finally, while the “Picasso draws a centaur in the air” photo that leads off this gallery is rightly celebrated, many of the images in this gallery are far less well-known — in fact, many of them never ran in the magazine. But they are no less thrilling, after all these years, than the famous shot of the 20th century’s archetypal creative genius crafting, on the fly, a simultaneously fleeting and enduring work of art. **A note on the last image in the gallery:** An excerpt from a 1968 special issue of LIFE, devoted entirely to Picasso, describes a typical scene at his home: “Putting on a mask is sometimes enough to set Picasso off into a kind of witch-doctor frenzy. He roars and writhes behind his gorilla mask, dances away to the mirror, returns in a rubber devil’s mask to swoop down on his daughter Paloma. Picasso was one of the first European artists to recognize the magic and beauty of African masks, and his own masks show the enduring power of that early influence.”  Pablo Picasso "draws" a centaur in the air with light, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso, south of France, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso, south of France, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ![By setting off a 1/10,000-second strobe light, \[Mili\] caught Picasso's intense, agile figure as it flailed away at the drawings](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte53c8f19a1d1ca52/698783b78e0601149345acae/150316-pablo-picasso-04.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp) Caption from LIFE. By setting off a 1/10,000-second strobe light, \[Mili\] caught Picasso's intense, agile figure as it flailed away at the drawings. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso creates a light drawing, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso creates a light drawing, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso casually carves a figure in space, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso in his studio, "drawing" a profile with a pen light, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso "draws" a vase of flowers with light, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A Pablo Picasso light drawing, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso creates a light drawing, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Pablo Picasso creates a figure with light, 1949. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Bonus: On the beach at Golfe-Juan in 1968, Gjon Mili captures Pablo Picasso reveling in two of his artistic obsessions: the mask and the minotaur, a mythical half-bull, half-man that featured prominently in much of the artist's work. 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