Lac Karen - Biography of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picassos name and art is recognizable across the globe. His art is so famous that even folks with hardly any interest in the art world know his name, and have probably seen at least one of his paintings before. Widely considered to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Picasso is a staple in any discussion of art history.

The Spanish artist is best known for helping create and inspire Cubism , a visual art style in which subjects are painted with geometric forms in a highly abstract way. While Picassos name has become synonymous with Cubism, it was actually another artist who gave the movement its name . The term was coined by French art critic Louis Vauxcelles after seeing landscape paintings by French artist Georges Braque. Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the paintings cubes.

While it was Braques paintings that inspired the term, it was Picassos Les Demoiselles d'Avignon that really broke ground and revolutionized art. Painted in 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is a large oil painting that depicts five nude female prostitutes from a brothel in Barcelona. Instead of being highly-realistic and conventionally feminine, the women are angular and masculine.

The influence of African Art, which Picasso discovered in May or June of 1907 at the ethnographic museum in Paris Palais du Trocadr, can clearly be seen on two of the women who have African-mask-like faces.

The primitive, abstract, and flat two-dimensional nature of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon went against everything that Western art stood for and accepted at that time. In rejecting the long-held belief that art should imitate nature and traditional techniques of perspective, Picassos art forced people to think of beauty in an entirely different way. The abstractness and distortion of his art showed that there are multiple viewpoints, rather than only one. In later years, Picassos cubist works became more abstract, to the point where the subject of the painting is not easily discernible and looks simply like overlapping planes and facets in muted colors.

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In addition to Cubism, Picassos other major innovation was the use of collage, in which he pasted pieces of printed or colored paper to his paintings. The term collage, coined by Picasso and Braque, is derived from the French word coller, which means glue. Picasso made a series of collages from 1912 to 1913.

In his collage The Letter , he pasted a real stamp onto a depicted letter. For Still-life with Chair-caning , he attached a printed oil-cloth that looked like a chair-caning pattern and surrounded it with a continuous loop of rope, which acted as the frame. Picassos collages not only further toyed with dimension and perspective but also showed that common, everyday objects can be used in high art.

Picasso is also known for his sculptures, drawings, and, in his later years, involvement with the Surrealist movement. His Guernica painting, which depicts the horrific destruction of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, was painted during his Surrealist period. As showcased by Guernica , he was not afraid to show that he supported freedom from oppression causes, which garnered him more admirers. He supported the Spanish forces fighting Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and refused to leave Paris during the German occupation of World War II.

Born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881, Picasso was the first child born to Don Jos Ruiz y Blasco and Mara Picasso y Lpez. Picassos full name was Pablo Diego Jos Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Mara de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santsima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruz y Picasso, the result of being named after various saints and relatives and the Spanish tradition of taking both the mothers and fathers surnames. As a teenager, Picasso adopted his mothers less common surname of Picasso rather than continuing with Ruiz, possibly because it suited his desire to stand out better.

With a painter and art teacher for a father, Picasso was immersed in art from an early age. His mother claimed that Picassos first word was piz, short for lapiz, or pencil. Picassos father gave him his first art lessons and clearly shared his love of drawing pigeons with the young boy; at age nine, Picasso drew Bullfight and Pigeons , in which spectators watch matadors face off against a bull and pigeons are suspended upside down in the air.

Recognizing his young sons extraordinary talent, his father made sure that Picasso received formal art training from the age of eleven. In 1891, the family moved north to La Corua. In 1895, tragedy struck the Picasso household when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of an upper respiratory tract illness.

Watching Conchita die, Picasso made a deal with God that he would sacrifice his artistic gift if only he would save Conchita. After Conchitas death, Picasso painted several paintings, including the First Communion , Christ Blessing the Devil , T he Holy Family in Egypt , and Altar to the Blessed Virgin , all of which showcased his conflicting feelings over the Catholic faith.

The family moved to Barcelona after Conchitas death, so that they could start a new life and for his father to take up a professorship at La Lonja, the School of Fine Arts. Picasso continued his art studies in Barcelona. The turning point in Picassos artistic life came in 1899, when he started hanging out with avant-garde writers and artists at Els Quatre Gats, a pub. Under the influence and support of his new friends, Picasso began rejecting his previous style of realism.

At Els Quatre Gats, Picasso socialized with the likes of Edvard Munch and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. It was also at Els Quatre Gats that Picasso met Jaime Sabartes, whom he immortalized in a painting and kept a close friendship with through the years. His first solo exhibition, which included portraits of his artistic friends, took place at Els Quatre Gats in 1900.

Arriving in Paris for the 1900 Worlds Fair, Picasso quickly became fascinated with Paris night clubs, cafes, and Montmartre dance halls. He painted Le Moulin de la Galette , a celebration of Parisian nightlife, that autumn. Between the fall of 1900 and 1904, he frequently stayed in Paris, where he worked and enjoyed the company of fellow artists and free-spirited individuals. His circle of friends included Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ambroise Vollard, Berthe Weill, and Gertrude and Leo Stein. Picassos first major exhibition, at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard in 1901, was a huge success, and garnered him several commissions.

Picasso permanently moved to Paris in April 1904. He lived in a property in Montmartre nicknamed the Bateau Lavoir because it looked like a laundry barge. Le Lapin Agile, a Montmartre cabaret which he would later make famous by painting, became Picassos favorite spot to hang out.

Picassos artistic accomplishments can hardly be put into words. He dominated Western art in the 20th century, revolutionized the very way in which people thought about and perceived art, and inspired countless artists after him. He co-founded the Cubist movement and the use of collage in art, which continues to be seen in the work of todays artists.

Some of Picassos most celebrated pieces, including The Two Saltimbanques (1901), Gertrude Stein (1906), Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Guernica