Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Andalusia in southern Spain, the first born of Maria Picasso y Lopez and Don José Ruiz y Blasco. His father, an art professor and painter of birds, formally taught him oil painting and figure drawing at the age of seven. Picasso painted in a naturalistic manner during his childhood, but would develop and explore a wide variety of styles throughout his life.
Picasso’s work is generally divided into five periods. In his Blue Period (1901-1904), while suffering depression from the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas, a Spanish artist and poet, he painted somber, monochromatic works depicting the poor and outcast in blue and blue-green hues. In his Rose Period (1904-1906), he used vibrant pink and orange colors, portraying circus performers and harlequins, focusing on more optimistic themes. From 1907 to 1909, he focused on African art. Between 1909 and 1912, he and Braque developed analytical cubism, a style whereby the artists fractured objects to analyze their shapes, bringing them to the point of total abstraction.
In 1912, Picasso and his contemporaries started exploring synthetic cubism, using cut newspaper to add patterns and textures to their works, creating the first examples of collage. Picasso made his first trip to Italy in 1917, coming into contact with Renaissance art, Roman paintings and mosaics, and sculptures by Bernini and Michelangelo, which would inspire the figurative paintings of his neoclassical era (1919-1929). His works in the mid 1920’s had surrealist attributes.
Picasso painted mostly from his memory or imagination. He chose not to use professional models, but instead drew people who had significance in his own life. Although he used color as a form of expression, he relied more on drawing to create space and form.
In 1907, he began exhibiting in an art gallery in Paris owned by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, a prominent art dealer who was one of the earliest promoters of his work. From 1939 to 1940, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City featured a major retrospective of his work. Picasso was also a poet, writing more than 300 poems between 1935 and 1959. He produced over 3,500 ceramic designs. In the 1950s he created reinterpretations of works by earlier painters, such as Goya, Manet, Poussin, and Delacroix. Between 1968 and1971, he produced hundreds of copperplate etchings.
Picasso died on April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France. He was buried at the Château of Vauvenargues, a property he had lived in with his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, from 1959 to 1962. At the time of his death, the prolific artist’s estate included more than 45,000 unsold works, including 1,885 paintings, 7,089 drawings, 1,228 sculptures, and 3,222 ceramics.
(Written by Michael Freborg)