Among all creative attitudes, there is one that always brings us back to the origin: play. It is not superficial or trivial; it is the most direct and free way of approaching creation. Play does not ask permission, does not justify anything, does not aim to be useful. It simply opens a space where everything is possible.
When we approach art with this attitude, we leave behind fear of the result and expectations. We paint, draw, make collages or sculptures with the same naturalness with which a child builds a sandcastle, knowing that the sea will wash it away. The value is not in what remains, but in the moment lived.
Play teaches us to take risks without anxiety. To try absurd combinations, unexpected colours, excessive gestures. And sometimes, it is precisely in this apparent disorder that surprise emerges, the most authentic connection with intuition.
Some artists have turned this attitude into the core of their work. Paul Klee saw in drawing a form of serious play, capable of revealing secret worlds, and said that a child draws as naturally as breathing. Alexander Calder, with his mobiles, carried play into space, making air and movement part of the artwork. Yoshitomo Nara plays with the boundary between innocence and rebellion in his childlike figures, reminding us that play can also be ironic and subversive. And Chiharu Shiota, with her thread installations, invites us into spaces that resemble webs of memory and emotion, as if they were an intimate and infinite game with emptiness.
Unlike calculated or methodical work, play brings us into a light state of presence. It is a form of active meditation: we are inside the process, immersed in the act of making, but free from the pressure of judgment. There is only the gesture, the moving hand, the matter responding.
And it is in this space of freedom that truth can emerge. Play is not an addition to the creative process: it is its heart. Without play, art becomes mechanical. With play, it breathes. Perhaps, in the end, the attitude of play is an invitation to look at the world again with fresh eyes, as if everything began anew each time.