Life and Childhood of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso has left behind not only a void in the art world, but also paintings that are a human legacy. His death revealed the true patron of art that he was, with the discovery of collections of famous contemporaries like Matisse. His life span from 1881 to 1973 has been the most studied and appreciated. This Spanish painter and sculptor was one of the most revered artists of the 20th-century. He not only co-founded the Cubist Movement, but went on to use the versatile dimension to depict German warfare during the Spanish Civil War.

Pablo Picasso: Birth of a Genius

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain. He was born on October 25, 1881 and baptized as Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispiniano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. In fact, his name is the product of worship and honor, to saints and relatives. He was the first child of Don José Ruiz and María Picasso López. He grew up in a middle-class family. His father was a naturalistic painter and a professor of art.

From an early age, Picasso displayed a passion for drawing. From the tender age of seven, Picasso began receiving formal training from his father. He learned oil painting and figure drawing. He was taught how to draw the human body from casts made of plaster and various live models. The family starved when his father took the decision to move to La Coruña in 1891, to join the School of Fine Arts. Picasso's father is believed to have vowed never to indulge in painting again, when he saw a painting of his son , an unfinished sketch of a pigeon. The precision was just too much to ignore.

With the death of his seven-year old sister in 1895, the family relocated to Barcelona. Picasso gave the entrance exam at the School Fine Arts for the advanced class and impressed the jury. He was just 13! Ruiz and his son argued frequently on sketches and drawings. The result was a refinement that earned Picasso entry into the Royal Academy, Madrid. However, instead of making the most of formal instruction, the young lad was more impressed by paintings by Diego Velázquez and Francisco Zurbarán. His own art borrowed the elegance of elongated limbs, capturing color and the mystical.

Pablo Picasso: The Artist

Picasso would sleep during the day and work at night, despite poverty and desperation. In Madrid, he co-founded an art magazine Arte Joven with his anarchist pal Francisco de Asís Soler. While Soler took care of the articles; Picasso illustrated with political cartoons. In due time, Picasso was a major contributor to the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Picasso painted portraits and other themes for patronized exhibitions. Among his friends were André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire the poet and author Alfred Jarry. When Picasso met Fernande Olivier, his mistress for a while, he made her his theme in many of his 'Rose' paintings. However, she could not hold on to him for long and he moved into a relationship with Marcelle Humbert. He would refer to her as Eva Gouel and openly declared his love for her in the Cubist works. Her premature death due illness, at 30, left Picasso devastated. Picasso married twice and fathered four children. He had many affairs subsequently and each of the women were immortalized in his art.

Picasso also enjoyed a film career. He made a cameo appearance in a Jean Cocteau experiment. Picasso always played 'Picasso the artist'. In 1955, he was part of Le Mystère Picasso, a film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Picasso remained neutral in World War I. He expressed anger at the fascists through his paintings. He joined the French Communist Party in 1944. He even received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1950 from the Soviet government. He remained loyal to the Communist Party to the end. He did not refrain from expressing concern over U.N. intervention in the Korean Civil War. Picasso’s work is best understood in 'periods'. These included 'Blue' from 1901-1904, 'Rose' from 1905-1907, 'African' 1908-1909, 'Analytic Cubism' 1909-1912, and 'Synthetic Cubism' 1912-1919. Pablo Picasso died in France, in 1973.