Pablo Picasso

Picasso (January 1962)
Birth name	Pablo Diego Josй Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Marнa de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santнsima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruiz y Picasso
Born	October 25, 1881(1881-10-25) en./wiki/Image:Flag_of_Spain.svgMбlaga, Spain
Died	April 8, 1973 (aged 91) en./wiki/Image:Flag_of_France.svgMougins, France
Nationality	Spanish
Field	Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking, Ceramics
Training	Jose Ruнz (father), Academy of Arts, Madrid
Movement	Cubism
Famous works	Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) Guernica (1937) The Weeping Woman (1937)

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973), often referred to simply as Picasso, was a Spanish painter and sculptor. His full name is Pablo Diego Josй Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Marнa de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santнsima Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso.[1] One of the most recognized figures in 20th century art, he is best known as the co-founder, along with Georges Braque, of cubism.

Biography

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Pablo Picasso, self-portrait Yo, Picasso, 1901,

Pablo Picasso was born in Mбlaga, Spain, the first child of Josй Ruiz y Blasco and Marнa Picasso y Lуpez. He was christened with the names Pablo, Diego, Josй, Francisco de Paula, Juan Nepomuceno, Maria de los Remedios, and Cipriano de la Santнsima Trinidad.[2]

Picasso's father was a painter whose specialty was the naturalistic depiction of birds and who for most of his life was also a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. The young Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother,[3] his first word was "piz," a shortening of lбpiz, the Spanish word for pencil.[4] It was from his father that Picasso had his first formal academic art training, such as 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 Academy of Arts (Academia de San Fernando) in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.

Personal life

After studying art in Madrid, he made his first trip to Paris in 1900, the art capital of Europe. In Paris, he lived with Max Jacob (journalist and poet), who helped him learn French. Max slept at night and Picasso slept during the day as he worked at night. There were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work had to be burned to keep the small room warm. In 1901, with his friend Soler, he founded the magazine Arte Joven in Madrid. The first edition was entirely illustrated by him. From that day, he started to simply sign his work Picasso, while before he signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.

In the early years of the 20th century, Picasso, still a struggling youth, divided his time between Barcelona and Paris, where in 1904, he began a long-term relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is she who appears in many of the Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom Picasso called Eva. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works.

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Pablo Picasso, Nature morte а la chaise cannйe,1912

In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including Andrй Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and writer Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.[5]

He maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women. In 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome. Khokhlova 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. Khokhlova'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-Thйrиse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Khokhlova 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 Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova's death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thйrиse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thйrиse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years 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 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.

During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picasso's artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.

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

He went through a difficult period after Gilot's departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he 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 Geneviиve Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.

Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. Roque 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 Gilot. Gilot 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 Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.

Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Cфte d'Azur. Although he was a celebrity, there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.

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. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystиre Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were "Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink any more."[6] He was interred at Castle Vauvenargues' park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhфne. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.[7]

Politics

Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War 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 pacifist.[citation needed] Some of his contemporaries, including Braque, felt that this neutrality had more to do with cowardice than principle.[citation needed] 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 and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them. He also remained aloof from the 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, though he did become a member of the Communist Party.

In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government.[8] 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. His beliefs tended towards anarcho-communism.[citation needed]

In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso declared: "I am a communist and my painting is a communist painting. But if I were a shoemaker, royalist or communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in any special way to show my politics." [citation needed]

Work

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 the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1905–1907), the African-influenced Period (1908–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919).

In 1939 - 40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.[9]

Before 1901

Picasso's training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist's beginnings.[10] During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away; by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun.[11] The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called "without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting."[12]

In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899-1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.[13]

Blue Period

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Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, (1902)

For more details on this topic, see Picasso's Blue Period.

Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colours. This period's starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year.[14] In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matter—prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects—Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie, painted in 1903 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.[15]

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Pablo Picasso, Les Noces de Pierrette, 1905

The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in The Blindman's Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other frequent subjects are artists, acrobats and harlequins. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso.

Rose Period

For more details on this topic, see Picasso's Rose Period.

The Rose Period (1905–1907) is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and again featuring many harlequins. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting.

African-influenced Period

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Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

For more details on this topic, see Picasso's African Period.

Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.

Analytic cubism

For more details on this topic, see Analytic cubism.

Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Braque using monochrome brownish colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time are very similar to each other.

Synthetic cubism

For more details on this topic, see Synthetic cubism.

Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) is a further development of Cubism in which cut paper fragments—often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages—are pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.

Classicism and surrealism

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Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

In the period following the upheaval of World War I Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This "return to order" is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picasso's paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.

During