Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. Pablo was the son of art teacher José Ruiz, paints and brushes accompanied him from childhood.

Pablo began to make clear pencil sketches very early. Life in the south of Spain, in the colorful ancient Malaga, where bullfights gathered almost all the inhabitants of the city, the bright colors of nature left their mark on his work.

The beginning of creativity

Picasso painted his first oil painting on wood "Picador" at the age of 8, dedicating it to a bullfight. He never parted with her - she was his talisman. And in general, if he liked some thing, he became its slave, for example, he wore out his favorite shirts to holes. He was a dark-eyed, stocky, southern-impulsive boy, overly ambitious and very superstitious.

One day, the father asked his 12-year-old son to complete a picture with doves. Picasso was so carried away that he created his own painting. When her father saw her, he froze in surprise. He could not come to his senses for a long time, and then he gave his son a palette, paints and no longer took them up, leaving painting.

Education and first successes

When the family moved to Barcelona in 1894, Pablo entered the school of fine arts. He began signing his works with his mother's surname, Picasso. In 1897, in Madrid, he competed for the Academy of San Fernando. It was then that the young man felt like a real artist.

Much in painting was easy for him, he drew quickly. Communicating with his colleagues, young artists, and comparing his paintings with others, he saw that his work is brighter, more colorful, more interesting. So gradually the realization of his exclusivity came to him.

But he understood that the path of the artist to the pinnacle of fame is difficult and long. Here ambition came in handy, the desire to conquer Olympus by all means.

Trip to France

In 1900, Picasso and a friend went to Paris - talented artists gathered there, new trends in art were born, and the Impressionists worked there. A year later, he already exhibited his work in the gallery of the famous collector Vollard.

At this time, the suicide of a friend made a great impression on him. Involuntarily, a “blue” period appeared in his work, when he painted gloomy paintings, the heroes of which were beggars, blind people, alcoholics, prostitutes “Absinthe drinker”, “A beggar with a boy”.

The elongated figures in his paintings resembled the manner of the Spaniard El Greco. But over time, the “blue” period was replaced by “pink” - this is how his famous “Girl on the Ball” appeared.

The birth of cubism

Since 1904, Picasso settled in Montmartre, where he worked on the painting "The Family of an Acrobat with a Monkey." In 1907 he met the artist Georges Braque. Together they soon moved away from naturalism, inventing a new form of painting - cubism.

Angular volumes, geometric figures, fragments of still lifes and faces, in which something human is hardly guessed, fill his canvases (“Portrait of Fernand Olivier”, “Factory Horta de Ebro”).

After the First World War, cubism from the works of Picasso gradually began to disappear. He collaborated with the Russian ballet, made scenery and costumes for productions.

At this time, he met the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, who in 1918 became his wife, and in 1921 their son Paul was born. Picasso still painted his cubist still lifes, but he had already joined the graphics, created cycles of paintings for Ovid's Metamorphoses, Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

Creativity during the war

During the Spanish Civil War, Picasso, an opponent of Franco, supporting the Republicans, wrote in 1937 a series of aquatints "Dreams and Lies of General Franco". After the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German and Italian aircraft, after the death of people and destruction, Picasso created an artistic monument to this tragedy.

On a huge canvas, in his typical expressive manner, he embodied everything - grief, the suffering of people, animals, destroyed buildings.

With this picture, he reflected his fear of an unknown force, warning everyone that the civil war in Spain could spread to Europe.

During the years of the German occupation, he remained in Paris and did not stop his work, painted portraits, still lifes, in which he reflected the tragedy and hopelessness of life under the fascist regime. He hated the warrior, hated Hitler, and in 1944 became a member of the French Communist Party.

But this was a purely external introduction to the ideals of Marx: he did not paint ideological pictures, he did not obey the laws and statutes of the party. The “Dove of Peace” written by him with a twig in its beak became a symbol of liberation from fascism.

Picasso - ceramics

In 1947, Picasso became interested in crafts and made decorative plates, dishes, jugs, figurines with his own hands at the factory, but soon he got tired of this hobby, and he switched to portraits.

In recent years, Picasso painted in different styles, imitating the Impressionists. Before his death, he admitted that most of all he liked the paintings of Modigliani.

Critics of painting noted: "Not everything is equal in his work, but all his works are highly valued."

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91 in Mougins, France. He was buried next to his castle Vovenarth.