Biography of Pablo Picasso

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This artist had several names. Are you prepared for reading his full name? Sure? Here we go...

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruiz y Picasso.

Alright, you can breathe now...

Pablo was born in Malaga, Andalusian region, Spain, on October 25, 1881. He is one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century.

He is known as co-founder of the Cubist movement and also for the styles’ diversity of his artworks. The Picasso Museum is among the top ten Museums in Barcelona and should be included as a must see in your Barcelona Sightseeing plan.

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The Learning Period

His father was a painter. He taught drawing at the school of Fine Arts and Crafts. Pablo, from his early age, showed a clear tendency and skill for drawing. His father trained him in drawing and oil painting since he was seven years old.

The family of Pablo was a middle-class family. His father accepted a better paid job in La Coruña and the family moved there in 1891, when Pablo was ten years old.

Pablo entered the school of Fine Arts in La Coruña, but the most important teacher he had, was his father. Four years later, when his father saw the excellent performance of the works developed by Pablo, he decided that he will never paint again.

In 1895, his father got a job at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and the family moved to this city. His father wanted him in an advanced class. Pablo completed and passed the entrance exam in a record time and was admitted, according to his father´s desire. Pablo was thirteen years old.

At the age of sixteen, his father and uncle sent Pablo to Madrid, to the Royal Academy of San Fernando, the main art school in Spain. He passed the entrance exam for advanced courses, but he would abandon the classes short after. He preferred to go to the Prado Museum and imitate the style of the old masters. He especially admired the works of El Greco.

The Young Picasso

Pablo returned to Barcelona in 1898, after he caught scarlet fever. He was a frequent visitor of The Four Cats cafe, a meeting point of intellectuals and artists, where he made some friends of the Modernist movement. He abandoned classicism and begun a new era of experiments based in self style.

In 1900, Picasso went to Paris, which was then considered the most important artistic capital of Europe. Those years were not easy for Pablo. The lack of money created a difficult situation for him. Picasso was often traveling between Paris and Barcelona during this period.

He went to Madrid, where he participated as co-founder of the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art). Picasso made the illustrations in the magazine, in the form of cartoons. But short after, in 1901, he came back to Paris. There, he met Joan Miro in 1921, during the first one-man show of the latter.

Pablo was strongly influenced by the suicide of his friend Casagemas. He painted more than one picture about his friend, which reveal the significance of this event in his life. During this period, he begun to use blue tones as dominating color on his paintings.

The Artist

The works of Pablo were influenced by different experiences and events in his life. His difficult times at the beginning marked one period. I will not enter in details about his turbulent private life, but this is another important period in his creativity.

In case you are interested, you can read detailed information about the private life of Picasso.

The War times and his political point of view are also reflected on his works. During the Second World War, he was in Paris, but unlucky, because Nazis did not like his style.

After the liberation of Paris, he joined the Communist Party. He also participated of the Peace Movement, which held a World Peace Conference in Paris in 1949. The famous dove created by Picasso was adopted as the official symbol of the Peace Movement.

Pablo was also a sculptor. One of his works, among others, is the sculpture in Chicago. He was commissioned to make a fifteen meters high public sculpture, which can be seen in Chicago downtown. He donated his work to the people of the city. See some more sculptures and other interesting pictures about Pablo.

The works of Pablo are distinguished in periods, though some of them are still on debate.

• Blue Period (1901-1904)
• Pink Period (1905-1907)
• African Period (1908-1909)
• Analytic Cubism (1909-1912)
• Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919)
• Classicism and Surrealism (1919-1936, between World War I and Spanish Civil War)
• War Time (1937-1945, during World War II)
• Later Works (1946-1973, after World War II)

The time when he was living in Barcelona City played an important role in his early works. You can see these works and others from his youth, in the Picasso Museum of Barcelona. A rich collection of his friend and personal secretary, Jaime Sabate, can also be appreciated.

Walk in the footsteps of the Artist

The Old Picasso

Pablo never wanted to fight in any of the three wars, The World War I, the Spanish Civil War or the World War II. He was a pacifist, but some called him a coward. After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Pablo begun a new period, but after some years, he lived through difficult times when his new mistress, François Gilot, left him in 1953.

There are several works reflecting the war times. Perhaps the most popular work of Pablo is the Guernica, which depict the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. This large canvas was exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art for a long time. Since 1992, the Guernica can be appreciated in the Reina Sofia Museum, in Madrid.

Pablo was already a very famous artist and a celebrity. He had enough money to live a good life. He bought a large villa at the south of France, where he was working for a time. As he was a celebrity, he had a problem, because he never liked to call the attention of the public.

Pablo decided to buy the Chateau Vauvenargues, near Aix-en-Provence, and moved there. The works of this times had again changes in color tones.

He was very creative and productive during his last years, by producing a lot of paintings and cooper plate etchings. His last paintings show plenty of colors and are carefully dated. There is no defined style in them.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973. The body of the Artist was buried in the Chateau Vauvenargues, his last residence in France.