Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881, the son of a painter who also taught drawing at the local School of Fine Arts and Crafts. Although he attended the School of Fine Arts in La Coruna and later the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, he learned to draw and paint from his father. He was a brilliant painter from a very early age and his first e
...see more »xhibition was in 1896 in Barcelona when he was only sixteen and won awards in exhibitions the following year in Madrid and Malaga. He briefly studied in Madrid at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, however he preferred to study the old masters in the Prado and returned to Barcelona when he developed scarlet fever. In Barcelona he frequented a café where he met future modernist painters that were creating new directions in art. He moved away from classic art to the modern movement much to the displeasure of his family.
Moving to Paris in 1900 with his friend Castegnas, Picasso began to paint in what came to be known as his Blue Period, when his friend committed suicide. All his paintings through 1904 were in shades of blue or green depicting misery, unhappiness, isolation and poverty. From 1904 to 1906, his paintings lightened to his Rose Period when he painted the circus performers, acrobats and harlequins at the Circus Medrano in Montmartre. In 1906 an art dealer bought most of Picasso's paintings of the circus performers marking a turning point financially in his career so that he never again had to worry about finances. The period from 1907 to 1917 became his cubism period that some called his Negro period, where he combined his interest in primitive African art with his ideas about cubism or modern art. This led to his period of synthetic cubism that was a collage of a still life with large patterning that looked like it had been cut and pasted.
By 1918, influenced by the war, Picasso's art changed to classicism followed by a period when he tried his hand at sculpting, and by 1927 he had changed his style to synthetic cubism, a form of surrealism whereby several views of the subject are shown simultaneously in the same picture. In 1937 Spain asked Picasso to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World Exposition that resulted in one of his best accomplishments, Guernica based on the German air raid of a town in France. In 1944 Picasso joined the Communist party and became an active participant in the Peace Movement. The Paris World Peace Conference adopted a dove created by Picasso as its symbol of peace.
Besides painting, Picasso was also a great printmaker creating lithographs, etchings, aquatints, drypoints and woodcuts and sometimes a combination of more than one. During his lifetime, he created more than 20,000 artworks. In 1965 he had prostate surgery and concentrated on drawings and etchings while recuperating. Picasso continued painting until his death on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91. His art lives on in private, public and corporate collections, museums and galleries and at retailers around the world. He remains one of the most prolific and famous modern artists of all time.
Pablo Picasso's art has sold for increasingly higher prices over the last several years, with a rare canvas from his pink period, "Garçon à la Pipe" selling for $93 million in 2004. Other recent high sales were: "Nu Jaune" (1907 work) - $12.25 million in 2005 and "Portrait of Dora Maar" (1941) - $85 million in 2006.
A partial list of artwork:
1902 Femme aux Bras Croises (Private Collection)
1903 La Vie (Cleveland Museum of Art)
1904 Brooding Woman, Paris (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
c.1905 Woman in a Chemise (Tate, London)
1905 Boy With a Pipe (Private Collection)
1906 La Toilette (Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York)
1906 Gertrude Stein (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)
1906-7 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1909-10 Seated Nude (Tate London)
1919 Guitar (Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands)
1917 Harlequin (Museo de Arte Moderno, Barcelona)
1925 The Three Dancers (Tate, London)
1933 Femmes d'Alger (Private Collection)
1937 Guernica (Prado, Madrid)
1945 The Charnel House (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1948 The Kitchen (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1951 Goat Skull and Bottle (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1950 Pregnant Woman (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1956 Woman by a Window (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1956 Studio in a Painted Frame (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1958 Bull. Cannes (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
1961 Jacqueline en Mariée, de Face I (Proof sold on Ebay 2/5/07 $7,000, Christies in 10/31/06 $16,000) print of his wife))
1971 At Work (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)« see less
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