The labor was difficult, and the baby was born so weak that the midwife considered him stillborn. She left it on the table and went to tell her mother the bad news. Luck saved the child – his uncle, Don Salvador, smoked cigars, and when he saw the baby lying on the table, he blew smoke in his face. The newborn grimaced and started crying. If not for smoking, Pablo Picasso might not have been born as a famous artist …
Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in the Andalusian province of Spain, in the city of Malaga. His father, José Ruiz Blasco, was an artist, so it’s not surprising that Pablo started painting from a young age. He painted his first oil painting at the age of 8, and at the age of 13 he entered the Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts, impressing the admissions committee with his talent. It was at this time that Pablo takes his mother’s surname – Picasso – believing that she sounds better, and also so that he is not confused with his father. Three years later, the young artist was already studying at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, which was considered the best in Spain.
Jose Ruiz Blasco
In 1900, Picasso visited Paris, the cultural capital of Europe, and two years later, in 1902, he began to paint pictures in gray-blue and blue-green cold tones. This period of his work was called the “blue period”. In 1905, Picasso creates the legendary Girl on a Balloon, a painting with warmer pink tones. And so the transition from the melancholic “blue period” to the life-affirming “pink” took place.
“Girl on the Ball”
In 1907, Picasso stops experimenting with color. He is more interested in the analysis of the form and its deformation. This is how his first work in the Cubist genre was born under the name “Avignon Maidens”. Over the next years, Picasso breaks lines and volumes, dissects faces in portraits into separate elements, turns individual elements into geometric shapes and blocks. His works are well sold out, and the artist, a few years earlier almost a beggar, becomes a very wealthy person.
“Avignon Girls”
In 1916, Picasso created costume designs for one of the performances of Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, where he met Olga Khokhlova, one of the ballerinas of the troupe, and in 1918 he married her. Three years later they had a son, Paul. After the wedding, Picasso parted with the bohemian life: now he was a wealthy man and an influential member of society. During this period, Picasso partly departs from cubism and returns to realistic art again.
Portrait of Olga
In 1925, Pablo Picasso painted the painting “Dance”, which gave rise to the surreal stage of his activity, not only in painting, but also in sculpture. In 1927, the artist met 17-year-old Maria Teresa Walter, they had an affair, she became his mistress and model. In 1935, Maria Teresa gave birth to his daughter, but a year later they parted. At the same time, Picasso also separated from his wife, although officially they remained married until Olga’s death in 1955. French artist and photographer Dora Maar becomes his model for the next nine years of his life. Her face Picasso broke and distorted in his works “Weeping Woman”, “Portrait of Dora Maar with a cat” and others. Now let’s move on to the most famous paintings by Pablo Picasso:
“Dance”
“Weeping Woman”
“Portrait of Dora Maar with a cat”
In 1937, the artist created one of his most legendary works – “Guernica” – in memory of the city of the same name in the Basque Country, bombed by Italian and German aircraft. During the Second World War, Pablo Picasso remained in Paris, and in 1944 he even joined the French Communist Party.
“Guernica”
After the war, Picasso went to the south of France with the young artist Francoise Gilot, who bore him two children and served as his muse until they parted in 1953. Seven years, from 1948 to 1955, the artist’s family spends in the city of Vallauris, famous for its ceramic workshops. There, Picasso awakens a curiosity for ceramics, which remained until the end of his life. He pays great attention to pacifism. One of the works of this period – “Dove of Peace” – becomes the emblem of the First World Peace Congress.
“Dove of peace”
In 1961, the elderly Picasso marries 34-year-old Jacqueline Rock, who inspired him to make a series of portraits. It was to her that Picasso dedicated most of his works. Jacqueline becomes the last woman in the turbulent life of a loving artist and stays with him until his last days. In the 1960s, Picasso was rethinking the classics: his works in the cubic style were original variations on the theme of paintings by prominent artists of the past (Manet, Goya, Velasquez). One of the most talented people of the 20th century died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91 in the French city of Mougins, in his own villa. After himself, Pablo Picasso left tens of thousands of works that changed the idea of fine art, and the glory of one of the most prominent artists of the century. His paintings are currently among the most expensive works sold at auction.
“First Picture”
“Harlequin”
“Gertrude Stein”
“Violin”
“Absinthe Drinker”
“Women Running Along the Shore”
