Home » Visual & Performing Arts » Artists » Pablo Picasso , part one

Pablo Picasso , part one

© Nick Burton

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Malaga, Spain. His father, Don Jose, was a painter who Pablo would later say painted "dining room pictures" of wild game or floral stills. Don Jose made very little money from his paintings, however, and he also worked teaching drawing at a local art school, and as a curator for a local museum and restoring artwork. Pablo developed an early phobia for school, but learned to draw at a young age from Don Jose, who would nail dead pigeons to a wall of his studio and have young Pablo draw them . Pablo's favorite subject to paint as a child was the bullfight, and his first canvas, painted at the age of eight, was "The Little Picador."

The family moved to LA Coruna, and at the age of twelve or thirteen, Pablo began to work on studies of anatomy, and his charcoal studies of legs, hands and feet were technically advanced and showed an uncanny use of light and shade. He also painted excellent portraits, including one of his sister, "lola With a Mantilla" (1894). The family moved again in 1896, this time to Barcelona, and Pablo was admitted to the La Lonja Academy, where Don Jose had been awarded a professorship. That year, he executed "Science and Charity," a scene depicting a sick woman's bedside.

In 1897, Picasso beam a regular at the "Els Quatre Gats" tavern in Barcelona, and he executed many portraits of the tavern's stylish Bohemians. He became friends there with Carlos Casagemas, and when Casagemas committed suicide after a bad love affair in 1901, while Picasso was in Paris, he painted "The Burial of Casagemas," modeled after EL Greco's "Burial of Count Orgaz."

On June 24, !901, Picasso had his first one-man exhibition at the Paris gallery of Ambroise Vollard, who was Paul Cezanne's art dealer. The diverse style of his works on display included "Female Nude," "Bullfight Scene" and "The Wait." In 1903, Picasso set up his studio at the Bateau-Lavoir in Monmartre, where he began his "blue" period paintings composed almost entirely of a cobalt blue hue he used because it was, at the time, the only paint he could really afford. Paintings from the "blue" period included "The Blindman's Family" (1903), " Wretches by the Seaside" (1903), and "Celestina" (1904). The paintings were haunting and disturbing.

At Bateau-Lavoir, Picasso met Fernande Olivier, and, under his influence, his paintings began to take on a happier tone. One of the people collecting art in Paris at the time was writer Gertrude Stein, and Picasso painted his famous portrait of her in 1906. Picasso also held his famous party for Henri Rousseau at the Bateau-Lavoir.

The copyright of the article Pablo Picasso , part one in Artists is owned by . Permission to republish Pablo Picasso , part one in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.