Pablo Ruiz Picasso Essay, Research Paper

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga in 1881. Pablo was the son of a respected art teacher,

and due to his father’s influence, young Pablo entered the Academy at Barcelona at age 14. This

was where he painted his first great work, “Girl with Bare Feet”. After two years of schooling,

Picasso transferred for even for advanced tutelage. This did not hold Picasso’s interest, so

instead he spent much of his time in cafes and in brothels.

Three years later, Picasso won a gold medal for his work, “Customs of Aragon”. This work

was displayed on exhibit in Picasso’s home town. In 1901, Picasso set up a studio in the northern

section of Paris known as Montmartre. Picasso had mastered traditional forms of art by now.

However, he was affected by the works of such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Vuillard which

can be noticed in his works at the time. “Longchamp” and “The Blue Room” are good examples of

this change in Picasso’s style. Soon after this, Picasso began to develop his own methods.

Illness struck Picasso in 1898 and he temporarily retired from the city and rested in the country.

Upon his return, Picasso was distressed with modern art and proceeded to use mother’s maiden name.

Picasso underwent an distressing part of his life for the next 4 years (1901-1904) and

demonstrated the life of the poor. The next two years following those last four were

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rather bright and vigorous. Perhaps this was because he realized how his life differed so much

from the poor on the streets. This was also a point in Picasso’s life when sculpture

and black art intrigued him. His work, “Two Nudes” reflects this attitude. Cubism soon followed

after this. Picasso began experimenting with the many facets of Cubism. Cubism was developed in

stages: analytic, synthetic, hermetic, and rococo. These techniques were not only useful in

painting but in collages as well. Picasso met Eva Marcelle Humbert, and fell in love with her but

the war separated them and she died in 1915. Picasso worked on “Harlequin” to cope with the grief

of his lost friend.

In 1917, Picasso involved himself with Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet. He worked on costume

and set design for Parade(1917) and while all this was going on Picasso met his future bride,

Olga Kokhloven, who was a dancer for the ballet. The Ballet gave him inspiration for his next

work, “Three Dancers”. Then something dreadful happened, a small Spanish town became a test site

for some new bombs. Picasso’s work, the “Guernica” demonstrates the horror, cruelty, and

injustice that took place. On a greater scale, not only does it provide compassion for those lost

at Guernica, but it also illustrates how useless and horrible war truly is. Following that,

Picasso became director of the Prado Gallery in Madrid. World War II blazed on while Picasso

worked in Paris and he worked diligently despite the world around him.

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Picasso left his wife in 1931, and following that he had many mistresses that provided

him with inspiration for his works and even did some modeling work for him. Picasso took an

interest in the last one of the mistresses, Jacqueline Roque, and decided he wanted her to be his

wife. Picasso’s 90th birthday was celebrated with an exhibition of eight of his works in the Louve

Museum of Paris.

Pablo Picasso created over 50,000 works in his lifetime. These were not all paintings

either. Included in Picasso’s works are: 347 untitled engravings, stage sets, illustrations of

classical texts, sculptures, ceramics, lithography, a play, and two collections of poetry.

Picasso died in Mougins, France at age 92. No one could say that Pablo Picasso was not a creative

individual. One look at the life he lived and it is easily seen what a genius he was and perhaps

the most renowned artist of all time.