Pablo Picasso

Picasso, the name that is associated with art and beauty! Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish citizen, who became famous throughout the world as an excellent painter, outstanding draughtsman and superb sculptor. One of the most well-known and respected individuals in the field of art in the 20^th century, he was also the founder of the wide variety of styles that we see being displayed in his work. Apart from that, Picasso was the co-founder of the Cubist movement too. Even today, people remember his excellent works, including the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the one depicting German bombing of Guernica.

 

Picasso was born as Pablo Ruiz Picasso on 25^th October 1881, in Málaga, Spain. He was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito, after various saints and relatives. He had a great talent for art since a very tender age and joined the art school, La Lonja in La Coruña (Spain) at the age of eleven only, after his family moved to Barcelona in 1895. Picasso’s talents started receiving recognition when he held his first exhibition in Barcelona in 1900.

 

In the same year, he went to Paris for the first time in his life and it is in this year only that he developed his style from the Blue period, which lasted till 1904. Picasso settled in Paris in April 1904. By this time, his circle of friends included Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude Leo Stein, Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill. With time, his style developed from Blue Period to Rose Period (1905) to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and finally, he evolved from the Analytic phase of Cubism (1908-11) to its Synthetic phase (starting from 1912).

 

By 1916, Picasso started on the ballet and theatrical productions. In the time that followed, he went ahead with his drawings and figural representations with a renewed vigor. Around this time, neoclassic influence was also seen in his works. He married Koklova in 1918 and became the proud father of first a boy (1921) and then, a girl (1935). In 1935, he separated from Koklova. He became involved with the Surrealists from 1925 to the 1930s. Picaso started sculptural work in the year 1931.

 

In the following year, he held exhibitions at Galeries Georges Petit (Paris) and Kunsthaus (Zürich). The great painter got involved with the Communist Party in the year 1944. Amongst the numerous exhibitions held by him during his lifetime, the most impressive ones were those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1939) and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (1955). In 1961, Picasso married Jacqueline Roque. He continued his affair with painting, drawing, prints, ceramics and sculpture until his death on 8^th April 1973.