Pablo Picasso
At 23:15 on the 25th of October 1881, a boy named Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain. His father José Ruiz y Blasco taught figure drawing and oil painting at the School of Crafts. The young artist showed such skill that his father once found him painting over an unfinished sketch of a pigeon. José declared that his son had surpassed him and vowed to give up painting himself. This moment marked the beginning of a career that would span more than 76 years.
Picasso received formal training from age seven under his father's strict academic methods. He drew from plaster casts and live models while his family moved between A Coruña and Barcelona. By 1894, his juvenile quality fell away and his career as a painter truly began. At 13, he completed an entrance exam for the advanced class at the academy in just one week. The jury admitted him despite the process usually taking students a month.
His early works included The First Communion (1896) which depicted his sister Lola. Portrait of Aunt Pepa followed in 1897, described by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot as one of the greatest portraits in Spanish painting history. These pieces demonstrated a command of realism that surprised his teachers and peers alike.
The Blue Period lasted from 1901 to 1904 and featured sombre paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green. Many works showed gaunt mothers with children or prostitutes and beggars. Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris during these years. His friend Carles Casagemas committed suicide in 1901, influencing the gloomy mood of this era.
La Vie appeared in 1903 as a posthumous portrait of Casagemas now held in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Frugal Repast (1904) depicted a blind man and a sighted woman seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness became a recurrent theme throughout this period alongside other works like The Blindman's Meal and the portrait of Celestina.
By 1904, the tone shifted toward the Rose Period which lasted until 1906. This new style utilized orange and pink colors featuring circus people, acrobats, and harlequins known as saltimbanques. The harlequin became a personal symbol for Picasso who met Fernande Olivier in Paris that same year. Her presence influenced many paintings in this warmer, more optimistic phase.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon emerged in 1907 to mark the start of Picasso's African-influenced Period. He repainted the faces of two figures after seeing African artefacts at the Palais du Trocadéro museum in June 1907. When he displayed the painting to acquaintances later that year, Matisse angrily dismissed it as a hoax. Picasso did not exhibit Les Demoiselles publicly until 1916.
Analytic Cubism developed between 1909 and 1912 with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and analyzed them in terms of their shapes. Their paintings shared many similarities during this time. Synthetic Cubism followed from 1912 to 1919 introducing cut paper fragments often wallpaper or newspaper pages pasted into compositions.
Still Life with Chair Caning appeared in 1912 as oil and printed oilcloth on canvas edged with rope. This work marked the first cubist collage and simultaneously what is often considered the first assemblage. Hard-edged square-cut diamonds became a common motif in these geometric minimalist works.
Picasso married ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova in 1918 while designing costumes for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. They had a son named Paulo who grew up to be a motorcycle racer. Khokhlova introduced him to high society but her insistence on social propriety clashed with his bohemian tendencies. The couple legally separated in 1941 though they remained married until her death in 1955.
In 1927, Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter who became his Golden muse. She gave birth to their daughter Maya in 1935. He secretly placed them in an apartment at 44 rue de La Boétie across from his residence with Olga. Dora Maar documented the painting of Guernica during their relationship in the late 1930s.
Françoise Gilot entered his life in 1944 when he was 63 years old. She was 40 years younger than him and bore two children: Claude born in 1947 and Paloma born in 1949. Their relationship ended in 1953 when she left him taking the children with her. Her memoir Life with Picasso described his abusive treatment and myriad infidelities.
Picasso joined the French Communist Party in 1944 after applying for citizenship which had been refused due to his extremist ideas evolving towards communism. He attended the 1948 World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Poland. In 1950 he received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government.
His political views were expressed through works like Massacre in Korea which opposed United Nations intervention. On the 9th of January 1949, he created Dove a black and white lithograph used to illustrate a poster at the 1949 World Peace Council. This image became an iconographic symbol known as The dove of peace.
During the Spanish Civil War he produced The Dream and Lie of Franco specifically for propagandistic purposes. Guernica appeared in 1937 as a large canvas embodying the inhumanity and brutality of war. It was exhibited at the Paris International Exposition before being sent to the United States to raise funds for Spanish refugees.
At his death on the 8th of April 1973 in Mougins, France, Picasso left behind more than 45,000 unsold works including 1,885 paintings and 1,228 sculptures. His estate tax payments to the French state were made in the form of these artworks forming the core collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. He died without a will leading to a feud over his estate among his heirs.
The Picasso Administration formed a committee to authenticate works at the beginning of the 1980s but disagreements led to its dissolution in 1993. Claude and Maya began issuing authenticity certificates separately until four heirs established the administration again in 2012. Only Claude's opinions were fully acknowledged by the undersigned during his tenure from 1989 to 2023.
Several paintings rank among the most expensive ever sold. Garçon à la pipe fetched US$104 million at Sotheby's on the 4th of May 2004. Women of Algiers set a record price of US$179.3 million at Christie's in New York on the 11th of May 2015. The Basel vote allowed citizens to decide whether to purchase two Picassos for their public museum.
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Common questions
When and where was Pablo Ruiz Picasso born?
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born at 23:15 on the 25th of October 1881 in Málaga, Spain. His father José Ruiz y Blasco taught figure drawing and oil painting at the School of Crafts.
What are the dates for the Blue Period and Rose Period of Pablo Picasso?
The Blue Period lasted from 1901 to 1904 and featured sombre paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green. The Rose Period followed from 1904 until 1906 and utilized orange and pink colors featuring circus people and acrobats.
Who were the main partners and children of Pablo Picasso?
Picasso married ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova in 1918 and had a son named Paulo. He later met Marie-Thérèse Walter who gave birth to their daughter Maya in 1935 and Françoise Gilot who bore Claude born in 1947 and Paloma born in 1949.
Which political works did Pablo Picasso create during the Spanish Civil War?
During the Spanish Civil War he produced The Dream and Lie of Franco specifically for propagandistic purposes. Guernica appeared in 1937 as a large canvas embodying the inhumanity and brutality of war.
How many unsold works did Pablo Picasso leave behind at his death on the 8th of April 1973?
At his death on the 8th of April 1973 in Mougins, France, Picasso left behind more than 45,000 unsold works including 1,885 paintings and 1,228 sculptures. His estate tax payments to the French state were made in the form of these artworks forming the core collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris.