Picasso, Pablo
Pablo Picasso was born in the family of a professor of drawing in Malaga, Spain, in 1881. He started to draw very early and at the age of 10 became a pupil of his father in A Coruña where he also had his first exhibition at the age of 13. In 1895 Pablo became a student at La Llotja art academy in Barcelona. His painting was exhibited at the Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid where he started to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1897. Young Picasso frequented the Prado discovering and copying the works of El Greco (1541-1614), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) and Francisco Goya (1746-1828) whose art would make a lasting effect on him throughout his entire career.
Picasso became increasingly dissatisfied with his academic studies. He went back to Barcelona in 1899 and had his show of portraits there in 1900. Pablo visited Paris and worked as an art editor of Arte Joven art magazine in Madrid in 1901. He started to use the blue colour in his paintings depicting people and streets in Paris and Barcelona where he spent most of his time in 1901-1904. This part of his career was called the Blue Period.
Picasso moved to Paris in 1904 and reverted to the earthly and more-Spanish palette of pottery colours denoting his Rose Period which lasted till 1906 and culminated in his painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon influenced by the African and tribal art in 1907. His fame was growing and he had such important art collectors of the day like Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and Sergey Shchukin (1854-1936) as well as a powerful art dealer and publisher Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) supporting him.
Inspired by indigenous sculpture and the art of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) Picasso and his new friend Georges Braque (1882-1963) worked closely together to develop Analytical Cubism from 1909 to 1912. They presented a new kind of reality in paintings by eliminating perspective and breaking down traditional planes away from Renaissance tradition though none of the artists wanted to move into the realm of total abstraction. Picasso started to experiment with collage which led to Synthetic Cubism in 1912-1914.
Pablo worked as a theatre designed and for the Ballets Russes during and after the First World War painted in Neoclassical style and moved close to Surrealism though not officially joining the group in the 1920s-1930s. During these years Picasso made sculptures first in the studio of Julio González (1876-1942) and later in his own. In 1937 he was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to make a mural for the World Fair in Paris. The painting was called Guernica which almost instantly made Picasso the most well-known and recognised artist in the world.
Pablo Picasso continued to paint and draw prolifically and worked in ceramics and making prints in his late years being able to afford a luxury lifestyle and leaving a collection of over 50,000 works to the French state and his heirs. There are Pablo Picasso Museums in Malaga and Paris and his works are present at the many world-renowned museums and art collections.
