Pablo Picasso

Spanish, 1881-1973. The art movement of Cubism was said to have changed the face of European painting and sculpture. Pablo Picasso was the co-founder of the entire movement together with Georges Braque. Cubism reconciled the three-dimensional with the two-dimensional spaces, in an attempt to hint at the intention behind the themes. Picasso also contributed significantly to Surrealism, Neoclassicism, and Expressionism. Despite achieving international recognition before the age of 50, a comparative analysis of the works created by Picasso in his life, from his childhood to his death, portrays a scale of development that perhaps no other artist could have achieved. By creating more than 20,000 picasso paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, theatrical sets, and costumes, Picasso played an unparalleled role in impacting the course of 20th century art.

Although he lived most of his adulthood in France, Picasso was Spanish by birth. Hailing from the city of Malaga in Andalusia, Spain, he was the eldest son of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. He was raised a Catholic, but in later life he would declare himself an atheist.

Pablo Picasso's father was an artist in his own right, who made a living painting birds and other game animals. He also taught art classes and curated the local museum. Don José Ruiz y Blasco began to educate his son in drawing and oil painting when the boy was seven years old, and discovered that young Pablo was a suitable student.

Picasso attended the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona,??where his father taught, at age 13. In 1897, Picasso began his studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, which was the most important art academy in Spain at the time. Picasso attended only briefly, preferring to wander through the art exhibitions at the Prado, studying paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, Francisco Goya, and Diego Veláquez.

During this nascent period of Picasso's life, he painted portraits, such as his sister Lola's First Communion. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, elements of symbolism and his own interpretation of modernism began to be evident in his stylized landscapes.

During World War II, Picasso remained in Paris under German occupation, enduring harassment from the Gestapo while continuing to create art. He sometimes wrote poetry, completing more than 300 plays between 1939 and 1959. He also completed two plays, "Desire Trapped by the Tail" and "The Four Girls."

After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began a new relationship with the much younger art student Francoise Gilot. Together, they had a son, Claude, in 1947, and a daughter, Paloma, in 1949. However, their relationship was doomed, like so many of Picasso's previous ones, due to his continued infidelities and abuse.

He focused on a sculpture during this time, participating in an international exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1949. Later he created a commissioned sculpture known as Chicago Picasso, which he donated to the city of the United States.

In 1961, at the age of 79, the artist married his second and last wife, 27-year-old Jacqueline Roque. She proved to be one of the greatest inspirations of his career. Picasso produced more than 70 portraits of her during the last 17 years that he was alive.

As his life drew to a close, the artist experienced a surge of creativity. The resulting works of art were a mixture of his earlier styles and included colorful paintings and copper engravings. Art experts later recognized the beginnings of Neo-Expressionism in Picasso's final works.

As one of the greatest influences on the course of 20th century art, Pablo Picasso often mixed various styles to create entirely new interpretations of what he saw. He was a driving force in the development of Cubism and elevated collage to the level of fine art.

With courage and self-confidence free from convention or fear of ostracism, Picasso followed his vision as he led him to new innovations in his craft. Similarly, his continued pursuit of passion in his many romantic relationships throughout his life inspired him to create countless paintings, sculptures, and prints. Picasso is not just a man and his work. Picasso is always a legend, in fact, almost a myth. In the public eye, he has long been the epitome of the genius of modern art. Picasso is an idol, one of those rare creatures that act as crucibles in which the diverse and often chaotic phenomena of culture are concentrated, which seem to capture the artistic life of his time in a single person.