Pablo Picasso

Background

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, on October 25, 1881, to María Picasso y López and Don José Ruiz y Blasco. His father was a painter and art teacher, someone who played a big part in Picasso’s early interest in art. As a child, he was not the brightest student, but he was a prodigy at drawing. His father taught him how to draw. By the time he was 13, Picasso’s skill surpassed that of his father. Sometimes, for being a bad student, his parents would send him to a bare cell with only a bench to sit on. Surprisingly, Picasso never felt severely punished because he always brought a sketch pad with him to draw on. The family soon moved to Barcelona in 1959, where the 14-year-old Picasso would enroll in the city’s School of Fine Arts. He was accepted even though he was several years younger than the other students there. Unfortunately, he liked to skip classes as he thought the school had too many formalities when it came to art. This happened again in 1897 when he attended the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona, where he befriended a social circle filled with artists. At that time, Picasso was heavily inspired by anarchic and radical ideas, which triggered him to go on a series of experiments in art.

Although his style went through a series of transformations, Picasso claimed that it was never for the sole reason of reinventing himself. In other words, he never thought about it as a series of radical shifts. He stated that it was all about finding the best technique to achieve the effect or goal he had in mind for an art piece. He kick-started his career with the Blue Period, which was named after the color that covered a lot of his paintings over those years (1901-1904). At that time, Picasso was depressed over the death of his best friend, Carles Casegemas. Some of his most famous paintings during this period were painted in 1903, including “Blue Nude,” “La Vie,” and “The Old Guitarist.” Picasso then moved to another period called the Rose Period, which was deeply inspired by his romantic involvement with a model named Fernande Olivier. He got over his depressive years and started using colors, including beige, pink, and red (1904). The Rose Period was then followed by the African-influenced Period. It all started after he saw an African artifact at the Palais du Trocadéro. What came out of this wave of inspiration were pieces including “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907), “Nude with Raised Arms” (1907), and “Three Women” (1908). There are ideas that he developed during this time that were applied to his Cubist period. The Cubist period first started with his Analytic Cubism style, in which Picasso and Georges Braque started analyzing shapes (1909-1912). Later on, the style was further developed into Synthetic Cubism, in which he started incorporating organic materials into his paintings. The geometric shapes he used became even more complex (1912-1919). During his experimentation with the Surrealism style, Picasso made an anti-war piece called “Guernica,” which expressed his outrage toward the Nazi German attack on Guernica. By the end of World War II, Picasso became more political, joining the Communist Party. By then, he was also considered an international celebrity. A year before his death, Picasso created one of his most moving pieces called “Self Portrait Facing Death,” a drawing with only a pencil and crayon.

Picasso was known for his multiple relationships with his girlfriends, mistresses, and prostitutes. In 1918, he married ballerina Olga Khokhlova and had a son together. The pair separated, and Picasso later married Jacqueline Roque. Even when he was married to Khokhlova, Picasso had another relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter that resulted in him having a daughter. In between those relationships, Picasso was also involved with fellow artist Dora Maar, to whom the poet Paul Éluard introduced Picasso. During that relationship, Picasso had an affair with Françoise Gilot, with whom he had two children.