Artist, sculptor, printer, ceramist, and set designer Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) lived in France for the most of his adult life.
Among his many accomplishments, he is widely recognised as one of the most important artists of the 20th century due to his role in establishing the Cubist school of thought, his development of constructed sculpture, his role in inventing collage, and his exploration of a wide range of other artistic approaches.
Most people are familiar with his anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic depiction of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War, and his proto-Cubist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907).
Picasso’s early years as a painter were marked by his great talent; he painted in a naturalistic style throughout his youth. His style evolved throughout the first decade of the twentieth century as he explored new approaches, media, and concepts.
Picasso’s Early And Mid-1920s Works
After 1906, Picasso was inspired to experiment with more extreme techniques by the Fauvist work of the somewhat older artist Henri Matisse, sparking a fertile rivalry between the two artists who were later labelled as the pioneers of modern art by critics.
Periodization is a common method of organising Picasso’s oeuvre. The Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and the Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), sometimes known as the Crystal period, are the generally regarded phases of his work.
Primarily neoclassical, but his later works typically exhibit Surrealist tendencies. Combinations of his many artistic eras become common in his later works.
Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and his extraordinary output over the course of his lengthy life helped him gain worldwide fame and a fortune befitting his revolutionary contributions to the art world.
When Did Picasso Pass Away?
Picasso, who had lived to be 91 years old, passed away on April 8, 1973. According to The New York Times, he died of pulmonary edoema, or fluid in the lungs. Picasso, together with his second wife Jacqueline Roque, reportedly passed away in their French estate.
A large number of people gathered around Picasso works in the Museum of Modern Art after hearing the news of his death. Tributes to The Times came from a wide range of creatives, politicians, and historians.
Former Spanish Foreign Minister Julio Alvarez Del Vayo told The New York Times, “I consider him not only the best painter of the century but also one of the finest of Spaniards.” They say, “He was a great patriot, a protector of the rights of the Spanish people.”
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Job and personal life
Early years
Drawing instructor José Ruiz Blasco and artist Maria Picasso López had their son Pablo. As early as the age of ten, when he began studying under his father in A Corua (where the family had relocated in 1891) because of the latter city’s artistic reputation, he showed signs of his extraordinary talent for sketching.
From that moment on, he was able to soon outshine his father because of his willingness to experiment with various ways of expressing himself. When he was 13, his father gave up his own artistic dreams to help finance his son’s first show in A Corua.
Moving to Barcelona in the fall of 1895, Pablo enrolled in the local art academy (La Llotja), where his father had taken his final position as a professor of drawing.
They had high hopes for their son’s future as an academic painter, and in 1897, when his picture Science and Charity, for which his father posed as the doctor, won an honourable mention at the Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid, they looked well founded in their optimism.
Discovery of Paris
The brilliant colour of Vincent van Gogh, of new fashion, of a city celebrating a world’s fair—not the drab colours of the Spanish palette, the black of the shawls of Spanish women, or the ochres and browns of the Spanish landscape—was one of Picasso’s principal artistic discoveries on that trip (October–December).
Picasso documented life in the French capital with charcoal, pastels, watercolours, and oils (Lovers in the Street [1900]). Moulin de la Galette (1900) was his homage to fellow Catalan Ramon Casas and French artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the Swiss Théophile Alexandre Steinlen.
The most well-known works by Picasso
Britannica estimates that Picasso produced more than 50,000 pieces of art over his career. Here’s a peak at some of his most well-known:
To protest the Nazi bombing of Guernica, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso painted this anti-war emblem in 1937.
In his “Blue Period,” when he painted works like “The Old Guitarist,” Picasso focused on “cold, monochrome blue palette, flattened forms, and emotional, psychological themes of human suffering and alienation,” as stated by the Art Institute of Chicago.
