Pablo Picasso Biography
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881. A naturally gifted artist, he moved
with his family to Barcelona in 1895. He spent a year studying at the Barcelona
School of Fine Arts, and won a gold medal with his large academic canvas,
Science and Charity, which is now on display in
Museo Picasso, Barcelona. He
went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, when he was 16, but only
stayed a few months before he opened his first studio in Barcelona.
Picasso spent the four years from 1900 between Paris and Barcelona. He painted
pictures of the bohemian life in Paris, and was most heavily influenced by the
works of Degas, and Toulouse-Latrec. His Blue Room, painted in 1901, is the best
example of this. It is now on display in the Phillips Collection in Washington,
D.C. Because various shades of blue dominated his rather melancholic paintings
from 1901 until 1904 it has become known as his Blue Period.
He finally settled in Paris in 1904. His paintings now became far more cheerful,
and the blue was replaced by pink. This Rose Period lasted for the next year or
so, and a common theme of the paintings that he produced during this time was
the circus. The Family of Saltimbanques, painted in 1905, is on display in the
National Gallery in Washington, D.C. This is the first of many paintings where
Picasso used the figure of the harlequin to represent his alter ego. Picasso
began to attract more influential patrons, and painted numerous portraits. One
of Gertrude Stein, the American writer, now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York.
In 1906, Picasso produced pieces that were heavily influenced by Greek, Iberian,
and African art and entered his Cubism period. This is evident in Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon, which is now on display in the Museum of Modern Art in
New York. The picture includes heavily distorted figures that are recreated as
having components, rather than natural body form, typical of Cubism. He produced
a number of works including a portrait of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler. This is now
on display in the Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso’s cubism took on another
dimension when he began working on collages with paper and cloth. His first
collage, Still Life with Chair Caning, is on display in the Musée Picasso in
Paris. He also produced a number of fine pencil drawings including a portrait,
Vollard, which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Picasso also revolutionized sculpture by creating pieces from everyday
materials. One example, Guitar, is made of cardboard, paper, and string, and is
on display in the Musée Picasso in Paris. As this technique was taken up by
other sculptors of the time, it became known as Constructivism.
Picasso’s love life also had an influence on his work. He painted realistic
portraits of his first wife, and son, in the early years from 1917. However, as
the marriage disintegrated he moved into darker, more surrealistic images during
the mid-1920s. He fell in love again, in the early 1930s, and his paintings took
on another lighter mood. However, his most important work,
Guernica, was a far
darker picture. It was influenced by events during the Spanish Civil War. It now
hangs in the Reina Sofía Art Centre in Madrid. Picasso died in 1973.
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