Pablo Picasso : Biography
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| Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso :
Biography
Born in Málaga, Spain, in 1881, Pablo
Picasso, became one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th
century and the creator (with Georges Braque) of Cubism. A Spanish expatriate
painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer, Picasso was
considered radical in his work. After a long prolific career, he died on April
8, 1973, in Mougins, France. The enormous body of Picasso's work remains,
however, and the legend lives on—a tribute to the vitality of the
"disquieting" Spaniard with the "sombrepiercing" eyes who
superstitiously believed that work would keep him alive. For nearly 80 of his
91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed
significantly to—and paralleled the entire development of—modern art in the
20th century.
Early Life and Education
Born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso's gargantuan
full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José
Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la
Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. Picasso's mother was
Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez. His father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and
art teacher. A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Picasso
possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him
destined for greatness. "When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you
become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as
the pope,'" he later recalled. "Instead, I became a painter and wound
up as Picasso."
Though he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious
talent for drawing at a very young age. According to legend, his first words
were "piz, piz," his childish attempt at saying "lápiz,"
the Spanish word for pencil. Picasso's father began teaching him to draw and
paint when he was a child, and by the time he was 13 years old, his skill level
had surpassed his father's. Soon, Picasso lost all desire to do any schoolwork,
choosing to spend the school days doodling in his notebook instead. "For
being a bad student, I was banished to the 'calaboose,' a bare cell with
whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on," he later remembered. "I
liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I
could have stayed there forever, drawing without stopping."
In 1895, when Picasso was 14 years old, he moved with his family to
Barcelona, Spain. where he quickly applied to the city's prestigious School of
Fine Arts. Although the school typically only accepted students several years
his senior, Picasso's entrance exam was so extraordinary that he was granted an
exception and admitted. Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the School of Fine
Arts' strict rules and formalities, and began skipping class so that he could
roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed.
In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal
Academy of San Fernando.
However, he again became frustrated
with his school's singular focus on classical subjects and techniques. During
this time, he wrote to a friend: "They just go on and on about the same
old stuff: Velázquez
for painting, Michelangelo
for sculpture." Once again, Picasso began skipping class to wander the
city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars and prostitutes, among other
things.
In 1899, Picasso moved back to
Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their
headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats ("The Four Cats").
Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive
break from the classical methods in which he had been trained, and began what
would become a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.
Blue
Period: 'Blue Nude,' 'La Vie' and Other Works
At the turn of the 20th century, Pablo
Picasso moved to Paris, France—the cultural center of European art—to open his
own studio. Art critics and historians typically break Picasso's adult career
into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is
called his "Blue Period," after the color that dominated nearly all
of Picasso's paintings over these years. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death
of his close friend, Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation
and anguish, almost exclusively in shades of blue and green. Picasso's most
famous paintings from the Blue Period include "Blue Nude," "La
Vie" and "The Old Guitarist," all three of which were completed
in 1903.
In contemplation of Picasso and his
Blue Period, Symbolist writer and critic Charles Morice once asked, "Is
this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a
masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more
than anyone else seems to be suffering?"
Rose Period: 'Gertrude Stein,'
'Two Nudes' and More
By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome
the depression that had previously debilitated him. Not only was he madly in love
with a beautiful model, Fernande Olivier, he was newly prosperous thanks to the
generous patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The artistic manifestation
of Picasso's improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors—including
beiges, pinks and reds—in what is known as his "Rose Period"
(1904-06). His most famous paintings from these years include "Family
at Saltimbanques" (1905), "Gertrude Stein"
(1905-06) and "Two Nudes" (1906).
Break into Cubism
In 1907, Pablo Picasso produced a
painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that
would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century: "Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon," a chilling depiction of five nude prostitutes,
abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of
blues, greens and grays. Today, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is
considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered
by Picasso and his friend and fellow painter, Georges Braque.
In Cubist paintings, objects are
broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their
composite geometric shapes and depicting them from multiple, simultaneous
viewpoints in order to create physics-defying, collage-like effects.
At once destructive and creative,
Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world. "It made me feel as
if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire," Braque said,
explaining that he was shocked when he first viewed Picasso's "Les
Demoiselles," but quickly became intrigued with Cubism, seeing the new
style as a revolutionary movement. French writer and critic Max Jacob, a good
friend of both Picasso and painter Juan Gris, called Cubism "the
'Harbinger Comet' of the new century," stating, "Cubism is ... a
picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature,
using reality merely as a means and not as an end."
Picasso's early Cubist paintings,
known as his "Analytic Cubist" works, include "Three Women"
(1907), "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" (1909) and "Girl with
Mandolin" (1910). His later Cubist works are distinguished as
"Synthetic Cubism" for moving even further away from artistic
typicalities of the time, creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny,
individual fragments. These paintings include "Still Life with Chair
Caning" (1912), "Card Player" (1913-14) and "Three
Musicians" (1921).
Classical Period
The outbreak of World War I ushered in
the next great change in Picasso's art. He grew more somber and, once again,
became preoccupied with the depiction of reality. His works between 1918 and
1927 are categorized as part of his "Classical Period," a brief
return to Realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. His most
interesting and important works from this period include "Three
Women at the Spring" (1921), "Two Women Running on the Beach/The
Race" (1922) and "The Pipes of Pan" (1923).
Surrealism
From 1927 onward, Picasso became
caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement known as Surrealism, the
artistic manifestation of which was a product of his own Cubism.
Picasso's most well-known Surrealist
painting, deemed one of the greatest paintings of all time, was completed in
1937, during the Spanish Civil War. After German bombers supporting Francisco
Franco's Nationalist forces carried out a devastating aerial attack on the
Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso, outraged by the bombing and
the inhumanity of war, painted "Guernica." Painted in black, white
and grays, the work is a Surrealist testament to the horrors of war, and
features a minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish
and terror. "Guernica" remains one of the most moving and powerful
anti-war paintings in history.
'Self Portrait Facing Death'
and Other Later Works
In the aftermath of World War II,
Picasso became more overtly political. He joined the Communist Party and was
twice honored with the International Lenin Peace Prize, first in 1950 and again
in 1961. By this point in his life, he was also an international celebrity, the
world's most famous living artist. While paparazzi chronicled his every move,
however, few paid attention to his art during this time.
In contrast to the dazzling complexity
of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso's later paintings display simple, childlike
imagery and crude technique.
Touching on the artistic validity of
these later works, Picasso once remarked upon passing a group of school kids in
his old age, "When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took
me a lifetime to learn to draw like them." Picasso created the epitome of
his later work, "Self Portrait Facing Death," using pencil and
crayon, a year before his death. The autobiographical subject, drawn with crude
technique, appears as something between a human and an ape, with a green face
and pink hair. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of wisdom,
fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a master at the height of his
powers.
Death and Legacy
Pablo Picasso continued to create art
and maintain an ambitious schedule in his later years, superstitiously
believing that work would keep him alive. He died on April 8, 1973, at the age
of 91, in Mougins, France. His legacy, however, has long endured.
Inarguably one of the most celebrated
and influential painters of the 20th century, Picasso continues to garner
reverence for his technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy,
and, together, these qualities have distinguished him as a revolutionary
artist. Picasso also remains renowned for endlessly reinventing himself,
switching between styles so radically different that his life's work seems to
be the product of five or six great artists rather than just one.
Of his penchant for style diversity,
Picasso insisted that his varied work was not indicative of radical shifts
throughout his career, but, rather, of his dedication to objectively evaluating
for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effect.
"Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I
should," he explained. "Different themes inevitably require different
methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is
a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one
wants to express it."
Personal Life
An incorrigible womanizer, Picasso had
countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes
during his lifetime, marrying only twice. He wed a ballerina named Olga
Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years, parting ways in
1927. In 1961, at the age of 69, he married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque.
Between marriages, in 1935, Picasso
met Dora Maar,
a fellow artist, on the set of Jean Renoir's
film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (released in 1936). The two soon
embarked upon a partnership that was both romantic and professional. Their
relationship lasted more than a decade, during and after which time Maar
struggled with depression; they parted ways in 1946, three years after Picasso
began having an affair with a woman named Françoise Gilot.
Picasso fathered four children: Paul,
Maya, Claude and Paloma.
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