Pablo Picasso's Light Drawings From 1949
"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 lively, ever-stirring
mind began to race. 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."