ELI5: Why Did Picasso Paint People Strangely?

Pablo Picasso painted people strangely because he wanted to show what a person looks like from many different angles all at the same time, rather than just copying a flat snapshot.

Imagine you are playing with a cardboard box in your living room:

• If you look at the box from the front, you only see one square side.
• If you want to see the top, the back, and the sides, you normally have to walk all the way around it.
• But if you unfold the box and lay it completely flat on the floor, you can see every single side all at once.

In everyday life, when you talk to your best friend, you do not just see them frozen like a photograph. You see them turn their head, blink their eyes, laugh, and move around. A normal camera only captures one split second from one single spot. Picasso thought that was boring.

Instead, he wanted to paint how we actually experience people in real life. In his paintings, he would put someone's side-view nose and their front-view smile on the same face. It looks like a jumbled puzzle because he took all those different moments and angles, chopped them up into geometric shapes, and glued them flat onto the canvas together.

He also painted this way to show deep feelings. Just like when you feel confused, excited, and happy all in one afternoon, Picasso used wild colors and crooked lines to show the messy, energetic emotions inside a person, rather than just their neat outside shell.