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Pablo Picassoref|name, formally Pablo Ruiz
Picasso, (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973)
was one of the recognized masters of 20th century
art, probably most famous as the founder, along
with Georges Braque, of Cubism.

==Introduction==
Picasso is  most famous as the co-founder of
Cubism. However, in a long life he produced a wide
and varied body of work, the best-known being the
Blue Period works which feature moving depictions
of acrobats, harlequins, prostitutes, beggars and
artists.

While Picasso was primarily a painter (in fact he
believed that an artist must paint in order to be
considered a true artist), he also worked with
small ceramic and bronze sculptures, collage and
even produced some poetry. "Je suis aussi un
poète," as he quipped to his friends.

Picasso was the most prolific painter ever, as
deemed in the Guiness Book of Records. He produced
about 13,500 paintings or designs, 100,000 prints
or engravings, 34,000 book illustrations, and 300
sculptures and ceramics plus drawings and
tapestries. The total value of his work was
estimated in 1973 to be about $750 million.

Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his
depiction of the Germany|German bombing of
Guernica, Spain: Guernica (painting)|Guernica.
This large canvas embodies for many the
inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. The
act of painting it was captured in a series of
photographs by Picasso's most famous lover, Dora
Maar, a distinguished artist in her own right.
Guernica hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art
for many years; Picasso stipulated that the
painting should not return to Spain until
democracy was restored in that country. In 1981
Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at
the CasĂłn del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting
became one of the main attractions in Madrid's
Reina SofĂ­a Museum when it opened.

Picasso was extremely talented as a painter and
draughtsman, even by the standards of the world's
great artists. He worked with equal facility in
oil paint|oil, watercolor painting|watercolour,
pastels, charcoal, pencil, and ink. He famously
rendered complex scenes as just a few geometric
shapes in his mixed-media Cubist works, but he
also produced masterful realist portraits
throughout his life. His pen and ink sketches of
his friends from the Cubist era and afterwards are
valued for their understated intimacy, examples of
the fluidity of his skills. Indeed, Picasso moved
with ease among the plastic arts despite limited
academic training (he finished only one year at
the Royal Academy in Madrid). His natural talents
were augmented by a ferocious work ethic that
survived into the final years of his long life.


== Periods ==
Picasso's work is often categorized into
"Periods". While the names of many of his later
periods are debated, the most commonly accepted
periods in his work are:

*Blue Period (1901-1904) - sombre paintings which
are influenced from a trip in Spain, his sad mood
in many of the pictures possibly coming from his
reaction to the death of a friend.

*Rose Period (1905-1907) - A more cheerful style
in orange and pink colours, which featured many
harlequins. He met Fernande Oliver in Paris and
many of these paintings are influenced by his warm
relationship with her, and also from French
painting.

*Pablo_Picasso/African|African influenced Period
(1908-09) - Influenced by the two figures on the
right in his painting of Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon, he used African artefacts as the
inspiration for his work.

*Analytical Cubism (1909-12) - A style of painting
he developed along with Braque using monochrome
brownish colours, where they took apart objects
and 'analysed' them in terms of their shapes.
Picasso's and Braque's paintings at this time are
very similar to each other.

*Synthetic Cubism (1912-19) - Involving the use of
collage and cut paper, it was the first time
collage had been used as a fine art work.

==Early life==

Pablo Diego José Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan
Nepomuceno CrispĂ­n Crispiniano de los Remedios
Cipriano de la SantĂ­sima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso
was born on October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain,
the first child of José Ruiz y Blasco and María
Picasso y LĂłpez.

Picasso's father, José Ruiz y Blasco, was himself
a painter; for most of his life, a professor of
art at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts; and was
a curator of a local museum. It was from his
father that Picasso learned the basics of formal
academic art training – figure drawing, and
painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art
schools throughout his childhood, often those
where his father taught, he never finished his
college level course of study at the Royal Academy
of San Fernando in Madrid, leaving after less than
a year.

The Picasso Museum in Barcelona features many of
Picasso's early works, created while he was living
in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of
Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his
Barcelona days and for many years Picasso's
personal secretary.  There are many precise and
detailed figure studies done in his youth under
his father's tutelage, as well as rarely seen
works from his old age, that clearly demonstrate
Picasso's firm grounding in classical techniques.

Picasso used the harlequin in many of his early
works, especially in his Blue and Rose Periods. A
comedic character depicted usually in checkered
patterned clothing, the harlequin became a
personal symbol of Picasso. During the 1930s, the
minotaur replaced the harlequin as a motif which
he used often in his work. His use of the minotaur
came partly because of contact with the
Surrealists who often used it as their symbol. The
minotaur appears in Picasso's painting Guernica.

==Picasso and pacifism==
Picasso remained neutral during the Spanish Civil
War, World War I and World War II, refusing to
fight for any side or country. Picasso never
commented on this but encouraged the idea that it
was because he was a pacifism|pacifist. Some of
his contemporaries though (including Braque) felt
that this neutrality had more to do with cowardice
than principle.

As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was
under no compulsion to fight against the invading
Germans in either world war. In the Spanish Civil
War, service for Spaniards living abroad was
optional and would have involved a voluntary
return to the country to join either side. While
Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of
Francisco Franco|Franco and the fascism|Fascists
through his art he did not take up arms against
them.

He also remained aloof from the Catalonia|Catalan
independence movement during his youth despite
expressing general support and being friendly with
activists within it. No political movement seemed
to compel his support to any great degree.

During the Second World War, Picasso lived in
German occupied Paris. The Nazis hated his style
of painting, so he was not able to show his works
during this time. He retreated into his studio,
continuing to paint nevertheless. While the
Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso
was still able to continue because of the French
resistance who would smuggle bronze to him.  

After the Second World War, Picasso rejoined the
French Communist Party, and even attended an
international peace conference in Poland. But
party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as
insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest
in Communist politics, though he remained a loyal
member of the Communist Party until his death.

==Personal life==

Picasso hated to be alone when he wasn't working.
In Paris, in addition to having a distinguished
coterie of friends in the Montmartre and
Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton,
Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Gertrude Stein and
others, he usually maintained a number of
mistresses in addition to his wife or primary
partner.  Picasso married twice and had four
children by three women.

In the early years of the 20th century, Picasso,
still a struggling youth, began a long term
relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is she who
appears in many of the Rose period paintings.
After garnering fame and some fortune, Picasso
left Fernande for Marcelle Humbert, whom Picasso
called Eva. Picasso included declarations of his
love for Eva in many Cubist works. Eva was
diagnosed with cancer and during her rapid
deterioration, Picasso administered to her every
need, making daily trips across Paris to visit her
in the hospital.


In 1918, Picasso married Olga Khoklova, a
ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom
Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome.
Olga introduced Picasso to high society, formal
dinner parties, and all the social niceties
attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris.
The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be
a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his
father.

Olga's insistence on social propriety clashed with
Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in
a state of constant conflict. In 1927 Picasso met
17 year old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a
secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Olga
soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as
French law required an even division of property
in the case of divorce and Picasso did not want
Olga to have half his wealth. The two remained
legally married until Olga's death in 1955.

Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with
Marie Thérèse and fathered a daughter, Maya,
with her. Marie Thérèse lived in the vain hope
that Picasso would one day marry her and
eventually hanged herself after Picasso's death.

The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a
constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two
were closest in the late 30s and early 40s and it
was Dora who documented the painting of Guernica.
Like all the women in his life, Dora was cruelly
emotionally abused by the narcissistic Picasso.

After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso
began to keep company with a young art student,
Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became
lovers, and had two children together, Claude, and
Paloma. Uniquely among Picasso's women, Françoise
eventually left Picasso in 1953 because of his
abusive treatment and infidelities. This came as a
severe blow to Picasso.

He went through a difficult period after
Françoise's departure, coming to terms with his
advancing age and his perception that he was an
old man, now in his seventies, who was no longer
attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A
number of ink drawings from this period explore
this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish
counterpoint to the beautiful young girl,
including several from a six-week affair with
Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off
the drawings Picasso made of her.

Picasso was not long in finding another lover,
Jacqueline Roque. Jacqueline worked at the Madoura
Pottery, where Picasso made and painted ceramics.
The two remained together for the rest of
Picasso's life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage
was also the means of one last act of revenge
against Françoise. Françoise had been seeking a
legal means to legitimize her children with
Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picasso's
encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her
then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to
secure her children's rights. Picasso then
secretly married Jacqueline after Françoise had
filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge
for her leaving him.

In addition to his manifold artistic
accomplishments, Picasso had a film career,
including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteau's
"Testament of Orpheus". Picasso always played
himself in his film appearances.

For a list of quotations by Pablo Picasso, see
Pablo Picasso/Quotations

==Later works==

In the 1950s his style changed once again as he
began looking at the art of the great masters, and
making new art about it.  He made a series of
works based on Velazquez's painting of Las
Meninas.  He also based paintings on works on art
by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix. 
During this time he lived at Cannes and in 1955
helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The
Mystery of Picasso)  directed by Henri-Georges
Clouzot.  

Picasso had accumulated a huge fortune and could
afford large villas in the south of France, at
Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in
the Provence-Alpes-CĂ´te d'Azur.  The media would
give him much attention, though they were often
more interested in his personal life than his art.
 
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge
50 foot high sculpture to be built in Chicago,
Illinois, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. 
He approached the project with a great deal of
enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was
ambiguous and became somewhat controversial.  What
the figure is exactly is not known; it could be a
bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract
shape.  The sculpture, one of the most
recognizable landmarks of downtown Chicago was
unveiled in 1967.  Picasso refused to be paid
$100,000 for it, donating it to the people of
Chicago.  

In his 80s and 90s, Picasso, no longer quite the
energetic dynamo he had been in his youth, became
more and more impotent. To a man for whom this was
such an important part of life, this was a serious
life change and Picasso seems to have dealt with
it by redoubling his already prolific artistic
output.

Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles,
his styles and periods changing right until the
end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his
work, Picasso became more daring, his works more
colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through
1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and
hundreds of copperplate engravings. At the time
these works were dismissed by most as pornographic
fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash
works of an artist who was past his prime. One
long time admirer, Douglas Cooper, called them
"the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old
man". Only later, after Picasso's death, when the
rest of the art world had moved on from abstract
expressionism, did the critical community come to
see that Picasso had already discovered
neo-expressionism and was, as usual, ahead of his
time.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973, and was
interred at Castle Vauvenargues' park, in
Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-RhĂ´ne. Jacqueline
prevented his children Claude and Paloma from
attending the funeral.  His famous last
words|final words were "drink to me".

At the time of his death, he had kept off the art
market that which he had not needed to sell. In
addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of
the work of other famous artists, some his
contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom
he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no
will, his death duties, or estate tax to the
French state, were paid in the form of his works
and others from his collection. These works form
the core of the immense and representative
collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In
2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum
dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga,
Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.

In 1999, Picasso's Les Noces (The Marriage of
Pierrette) sold for more than USD $51 million.

==List of works==

Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most
expensive paintings in the world. On May 4, 2004
Picasso's painting Garçon à la pipe was sold for
United States dollar|USD $104 million at
Sotheby's, thus establishing a new price record
(see also List of most expensive paintings).
*List of Picasso artworks 1889-1900
*List of Picasso artworks 1901-1910
*List of Picasso artworks 1911-1920
*List of Picasso artworks 1921-1930
*List of Picasso artworks 1931-1940
*List of Picasso artworks 1941-1950
*List of Picasso artworks 1951-1960
*List of Picasso artworks 1961-1970
*List of Picasso artworks 1971-1973
(For a comprehensive catalogue of his works visit
the On-Line Picasso Project)

==Notes==


#note|name In his early years he signed his name
Ruiz Blasco after his father but, from about 1901
he switched to using his mother's name.


==References==
*Museum of Modern Art|The Museum of Modern Art.
Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Ed. William Rubin,
chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York. 1980. ISBN
0-87070-519-9

*Olivier Widmaier Picasso (grandson of Picasso
(Maya's son)). PICASSO: The Real Family Story.
Prestel Publ. 2004. 320 p. ISBN 3-79133-149-3
(biography)

* Mary Ann, Caws. Introd. by Arthur C. Danto.
PICASSO, PABLO. London 2005. 173 p. 30 pict
(biography).

== External links ==

Commons|Pablo Picasso
* http://www.tamu.edu/mocl/picasso/ On-Line
Picasso Project
*
http://www.artquotes.net/masters/picasso_quotes.ht
m Pablo Picasso Quotes and Paintings
*
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pica/hd_pica.htm
Pablo Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts,
New York
* http://www.insecula.com/contact/A009007.html
Pablo Ruiz Blasco y Picasso (Picasso): 400 works
*
http://www.insecula.com/salle/theme_40060_M0127.ht
ml Musée Picasso, Paris
* http://www.museopicassomalaga.org/ Museo Picasso
Málaga
* http://www.picasso.com Pablo Picasso Paintings
Prints and Biography
* http://www.aestheticrealism.org/News-ck.htm
"Power and Tenderness in Men and in Picasso's
'Minotauromachy'" by Chaim Koppelman
*
http://www.peacemakersguide.org/peace/Peacemakers/
Pablo-Picasso.htm Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide
profile on Pablo Picasso