Picasso Pablo

Despite being baptized Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist Picasso’s family was middle-class His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork
The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts They stayed almost four years On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon Observing the precision of his son’s technique, anapocryphal story relates, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting, though paintings by him exist from later years
In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13 The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life His father rented him a small room close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings The two argued frequently
Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid’s Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country’s foremost art school At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrollment Madrid held many other attractions The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso‘s later work
Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe There, he met his first Parisian friend, journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature Soon they shared an apartment; these were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work Picasso; before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso
By 1905, Picasso became a favorite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work Picasso painted portraits of  both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein Gertrude Stein became Picasso‘s principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse’s paintings Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse, while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso
In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler Kahnweiler was a German art historian and art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubism that they jointly developed Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 Apollinaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated
In the early 20th century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris In 1904 he met Fernande Olivier, a bohemian artist who became his mistress Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings After acquiring some fame and fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, who he called Eva Gouel Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915 After World War I, Picasso made a number of important relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and others In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Erik Satie’s Parade, in Rome Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant to the life of the rich in 1920s Paris The two had a son, Paulo
Khokhlova’s insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev’s troup, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920 Picasso took the opportunity to make several drawings of the composer
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her Picasso’s marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth The two remained legally married until Khokhlova’s death in 1955 Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso’s death Throughout his life Picasso maintained several mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner
Photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city Picasso’s artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time He was often harassed by the Gestapo During one search of his apartment, an officer saw a photograph of the painting Guernica Did you do that? the German asked Picasso No, he replied, You did
Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint, producing works such as the Still Life with Guitar (1942) and The Charnel House (1944–48) Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French Resistance Around this time, Picasso took up writing as an alternative outlet
In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso, then 63 years old, began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Françoise Gilot She was 40 years younger than he was and they began to live together Eventually they had two children
By his 70s, many paintings, ink drawings and prints have as their theme an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics She became his lover, and then his second wife in 1961 The two were together for the remainder of Picasso’s life
By this time, Picasso was an international celebrity, with often as much interest in his personal life as his art
In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Picasso made a few film appearances, always as himself, including a cameo in Jean Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962 Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old

Picasso’s work is often categorized into periods:
Picasso’s Blue Period (1901–1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors This period’s starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art
The Rose Period (1904–1906) is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899–1901 period (ie just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods
Picasso’s African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows
Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors Both artists took apart objects and analyzed them in terms of their shapes Picasso and Braque’s paintings at this time share many similarities Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in aneoclassical style This return to order is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, the artists of the New Objectivity movement and of the Novecento Italiano movement Picasso’s paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Raphael and Ingres
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picasso’s Guernica The minotaur and Picasso‘s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter are heavily featured in his celebrated Vollard Suite of etchings
Arguably Picasso‘s most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War – Guernica This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them
Guernica was on display in New York’s Museum of Modern Art for many years In 1981, it was returned to Spain and was on exhibit at the Casón del Buen Retiro In 1992 the painting was put on display in Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum when it opened
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in mid-1949 In the 1950s, Picasso’s style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters He made a series of works based on Velázquez‘s painting of Las Meninas
He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet,Courbet and Delacroix
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge 50-foot (15 m)-high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967 Picasso refused to be paid for it, donating it to the people of the city
Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 to 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime Only later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time