Master artist Pablo Ruiz y Picasso (1881–1973) was born on this day in Málaga, Spain. “My work is like a diary,” he said. “To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors life.”

Considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, his astonishing output of more than 20,000 works spans painting, sculpture, graphic art, and ceramics. As soon as he mastered one style, he moved to the next, following curiosity and courage.

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes,” he mused. The son of an art professor, Picasso was said to be born with a pencil in his hand, creating powerful portraits at fourteen and finding early success soon after.

With fierce passion he rejected complacency. Taste, he said, is “the enemy of creativeness.” With Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), he helped ignite the creative revolution of Cubism, reshaping how the world is seen, inviting us to look again.

Poet Guillaume Apollinaire called Cubism “the art of depicting new wholes with elements borrowed from the reality of vision and the freedom of conception.” Time praised Picasso as a singular figure, rivaled only by Michelangelo, and perhaps unmatched in fame and influence.

“I do not seek,” the genius said. “I find.” In love and work, he believed in renewal, in seeing with fresh eyes, and in creating from the heart.