Picasso, Pablo – (1881 – 1973)

Pablo Picasso is born in Malaga on October 25, 1881 the son of the painter and drawing teacher José
Ruiz Blasco. He attends the Art Academy La Lonja in Barcelona in 1895, where his father also teaches.
Picasso studies at the Madrid Academy in 1897. He travels to Paris in 1900, where he has his first one-
man show with Ambroise Vollard.

Picasso’s early work begins with the melancholic pictures of the “Blue Period”. The cheerful “Rose
Period” follows from 1905 to 1907, a period in which his circus paintings were made. The painting “Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon” marks the beginning of Cubism in 1907, which Pablo Picasso develops together
with Georges Braque and that can be separated into two categories, the “analytical Cubism” and
the “synthetic Cubism”.

Picasso gets to know Fernande Olivier in 1904. His women also play a big role for his artistic oeuvre;
they are his lovers, his models and his muses. Their facial features appear in many of his works.
Fernande is followed by the dancer Olga Koklowa, whom he meets while working on designs for Sergej
Diaghilew’s “Ballets Russes”. Around 1917 Picasso was also working as costume andstage designer for
Jean Cocteau’s ballet “Parade”.

Pablo Picasso’s works after 1918 cannot be clearly categorized in terms of stylistic terminology, it
contains objective-realistic, classicist, symbolistic, surreal and also abstracts elements. The artist takes
on what is already there, familiarizes himself with it and breaks new grounds in terms of composition,
finding inspiration in his own reality and motifs that surround him.Picasso meets Marie-Thérèse Walter in
1927, she also becomes his lover and muse at the same time. Besides paintings, a vast graphic oeuvre is
created, such as first series of etchings. Picasso makes more and more sculpture as of 1928, as well as
mixed media objects with wires and assemblages. .

Françoise Gilot enters Picaso’s life in 1943. As of 1945 the lithography becomes the predominant graphic
technique. Picasso makes objects of utility and pottery objects in the town of Vallauris in South France as
of 1947.

Picasso marriages Jacqueline Roque in 1961. He dies in Mougins on April 8, 1973.
The Museo Picasso is opened in Barcelona as early as in 1963, which gets most of his estate after his
death. The Musée Picasso in Paris is opened in 1985.

[imasters-wp-faq cat=’101′ filters=’no’]