Picasso, Pablo.
Works of the artist.
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881 and died in Mougins in 1973. He was a painter, sculptor and engraver considered the most popular and influential artist of the twentieth century and the greatest exponent of cubism. [+]
Picasso, Pablo
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881 and died in Mougins in 1973. He was a painter, sculptor and engraver considered the most popular and influential artist of the twentieth century and the greatest exponent of cubism.
From an early age he was interested in painting and drawing, due to his father's influence, the artist José Ruiz Blasco.
His family lived in several cities until they moved to Barcelona in 1895. There, Picasso began his artistic training at the Llotja School of Barcelona, where his father was a teacher. Since the beginning his pictorial gifts surprised both teachers and students, allowing him to skip classes so he could work on his works.
In Barcelona Picasso surrounded himself with a group of artists such as Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusiñol, with whom he met at the bar \"Els Quatre Gats\" and discussed art, culture, literature and politics, among other topics.
In 1897 Picasso entered the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando but after a brief period there, he returned to Barcelona and set up his first studio when he was only 16 years old.
Between 1901 and 1904 Picasso alternated his residence between Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, while his painting entered the stage called blue, strongly influenced by symbolism and the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas.
In 1904 Picasso decided to officially move to the French capital, and more specifically to the bohemian district of Montmatre. Some of his great friends were Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob and André Salmon.
During this period his paintings underwent a new evolution, characterized by earthy and pink colors. Characterizing the beginning of his \"pink period\". Soon after he met his muse, model and first wife Fernande Olivier. He also came into contact with personalities such as the American brothers Leo and Gertrude Stein or the man who became his art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.
At the end of 1906 Picasso began working on a large-scale composition that changed the course of twentieth-century art: \"Les demoiselles d'Avignon.\" Picasso unknowingly created a new movement and its most characteristic hallmark: Cubism. Together with Georges Braque, he gave a 180-degree turn to the plastic heritage since the Renaissance, especially in the field of pictorial representation of volume.
Between 1909 and 1912 Picasso and Braque developed this style analytically. However, in 1912 they introduced an element of flexibility in the form of paper cuttings and other materials directly applied to the canvas, a technique they called collage. The admission into the exclusive circle of Cubism of the Spanish painter Juan Gris led to the synthetic stage of that style, marked by a richer chromatic range and the multiplicity of materials and references. During the height of cubism Picasso separated from Fernande and began a relationship with Eva Guel. She died in 1915.
Between 1915 and the mid-1920s Picasso gradually abandoned the rigors of Cubism to enter a figurativist stage known as the classical stage. During this period he collaborated with Sergey Diaghilev, the impresario of the Russian Ballets, creating the scenographies of \"Parade\" (1919), \"The Three-Cornered Hat\" (1920) and \"Pulcinella\" (1921), among others. On a trip to Italy Picasso met his first wife, the dancer Olga Koklova, whom he married in 1919. Two years later their first son Paulo was born.
In 1928, after meeting with artist Julio Gonzalez, Picasso became interested in sculpture. Between them they introduced important innovations, such as the use of wrought iron.
In 1935 his daughter Maya was born, from his relationship with Marie-Therèse Walter, with whom Pablo Picasso lived openly despite still being married to Olga Koklova. From 1936, both women shared the painter with a third woman, the photographer Dora Maar.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Picasso increased his political commitment by positioning himself in favor of the Republican side. It was then that he painted one of his most important and universal works: Guernica. The absence of colors or the figures in unnatural postures denounced the bombing of the Nazi German aviation that razed this Basque town in an action of support to the troops of General Francisco Franco.
In 1943 Picasso met Françoise Gilot, with whom he would have two children, Claude and Paloma. Three years later, he left Paris to settle in Antibes, where he incorporated ceramics into his favorite mediums.
In the 1950s Picasso made numerous series on great classic works of painting, which he reinterpreted as a tribute. In 1961 he married Jacqueline Roque, which would be his last relationship.
Picasso and Jacqueline retired to the castle of Vouvenargues, where he continued to work tirelessly until the day of his death.
