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Pablo Picasso is, without a doubt, one of the most important 20th-century artists. Picasso was the forefather of cubism and had a huge impact on contemporary art. Creator of “Guernica,” which is widely considered to be a masterpiece of contemporary painting, the Malaga-born artist refined several genres and styles over the course of his long career. Barcelona's Picasso Museum is home to one of the world’s largest collections of works by the artist.Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga, the eldest child of José Ruiz Blasco and María de la Paz Picasso Echevarría. He spent his childhood immersed in art thanks to his father, who, in addition to being a painter himself, was a drawing instructor and curator at the Municipal Museum, and a close family friend, the painter Antonio Muñoz Degrain. At the age of five, Picasso completed his first painting, depicting a Spanish picador.
In 1895, the family moved to Barcelona, where Picasso enrolled in advanced drawing and painting classes at the provincial School of Fine Arts. Two years later, in 1897, Picasso was awarded an honorable mention in a national exhibition held in Madrid for his painting "Science and Charity." He would win the award again in 1899 for "Customs of Aragón."
After contracting scarlet fever, Picasso spent almost a year in convalescence in Horta de San Juan (Tarragona) at the house of his friend Manuel Pallarés. His stay in the town would prove to be a turning point in his trajectory as an artist, marking his liberation from academic concerns and the start of a lifelong attachment to Catalonia.
In October 1900, he traveled to Paris for the first time, along with his friends Casagemas and Pallarés. Despite the brevity of the visit, which hardly lasted three months, Picasso completed a large body of work. The period saw such paintings as "Le Moulin de la Galette," "Woman with Veil," "Ballerina in Blue," and "The Embrace." Upon returning to Spain, he founded the journal "Arte Joven" with the writer Francisco de A. Soler and held an exhibited of his pastel drawings in Barcelona. Subsequently, he returned to Paris, where he participated in a joint show with Francisco Iturrino at the Vollard gallery and painted almost all the pieces of what would later come to be known as his Lautrec period. After another stay in Barcelona, he returned to the French capital, where he embarked on his blue period, which would continue upon his return to Catalonia. Works such as "Poor People on the Seashore" and "The Old Guitarist" date from this period. In 1904, Picasso moved to Paris permanently. Within a year, he would begin what has come to be known as his rose period with works such as "Acrobat on a Ball" and "Family of Saltimbanques."
Picasso's pre-cubist period began in 1906, when the artist spent several months in Gósol (Lleida) with Fernande Olivier and painted "Woman with Loaves of Bread." The following year, he painted "Les demoiselles d'Avingon," a highly acclaimed piece today that was scarcely exhibited at the time.
In 1909, Picasso returned with Fernande Olivier and Manuel Pallarés to Horta de San Juan, where he painted "Factory in Horta" and "Fernande." The summer he spent in that town marked the true start of his cubist period. During his analytical cubism period, which ran from 1910 to 1911, he produced several landscapes and portraits, including "Kahnweiler." In 1912, he entered his synthetic cubism period and produced his first “papiers collés” or cubist collages. Picasso went on to engage in other types of cubism, such as curvilinear cubism (1923), and he pursued the style into the 1920s.
However, cubism was not the only style the artist refined in those years. His classical period spanned from 1915 to 1925 and ushered in such works as "Harlequin," and "Three Women at the Fountain.” From 1917 to 1924, he assisted the Diaghilev ballet company with the sets for productions such as "Pulcinella" and "The Three-Cornered Hat." In doing so, he met Olga Koklova, a dancer in the company, whom he married in 1918. In 1921, their child Pablo was born. Picasso painted several portraits of his son, including "Artist’s Son as Harlequin” and "Artist’s Son as Pierrot," both of which form a part of his so-called Pompeian period.
In 1924, the artist initiated his post-cubist period with works such as "The Dance." Three years later, he began to experiment heavily with prints, a medium he had all but abandoned since 1905. Among the works from this period are his illustrations of "Ovid’s Metamorphoses," "Minotauromachy" and his "Tauromachy" aqua tints, to name but a few.
Though lesser known for his sculptures, he also continued his work in this genre over the years, usually simultaneously with his painting. Some of his most renowned sculptures include "Head of a Woman" and "The Goat."
In 1935, after a marital crisis ending in his separation from Olga Koklova, Picasso tried his hand at writing. His most well-known written work is the play "Desire Caught by the Tail." One year later, after the birth of María de la Concepción, his daughter with his new partner Marie Thérese Walter, he returned to painting.
In 1937, following the destruction of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso painted what may be his most celebrated work, "Guernica," a huge, dramatic painting dealing with the horrors of war.
In 1945, after the Spanish Civil War and World War II had ended, he turned his attention primarily to prints, producing a vast number of works in just six months.
In the 1950s, he attended several World Peace Conferences throughout Europe. His famous "Dove of Peace" graced the posters for these meetings. Other pieces from this period include his variations on past themes, such as the 44 canvases comprising the "Las Meninas" series, based on the eponymous painting by Velázquez.
Picasso died in 1973 in Mougins (France).
Marta Franco Guallar :.
January, 3rd 2004