The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.

Picasso’s remark frames “good sense” (prudence, conventional logic, and socially approved restraint) as a brake on invention. Creativity often requires risk: trying what seems unreasonable, suspending judgment, and tolerating ambiguity long enough for new forms to emerge. In this view, common sense can become a censor that pushes artists toward safe solutions and familiar styles. The line also reflects a modernist ethos associated with Picasso’s career—breaking academic rules, re-seeing ordinary subjects, and privileging experimentation over correctness. It is less an attack on intelligence than on the habit of letting practicality and consensus dictate what is possible in art.