Pablo Picasso (b. 1881 Malaga, Spain – 1973 Mougins, France)
The son of an academic painter, José Ruiz Blanco, Picasso began to draw at an early age. In his teens he studied in Barcelona at La Lonja, the academy of fine arts. His first exhibition took place in Barcelona, in 1900, and that fall he went to Paris for the first of several stays, ultimately settling there in 1904. Soon his circle of friends included Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as two dealers, Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill.
During this early period, Picasso’s style evolved from his Blue Period (1901-04) to the Rose Period (1905) to the pivotal work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), followed by Cubism. Cubism evolved from an Analytic phase (ca. 1908-11), through its Synthetic phase (1912-13). Picasso's collaboration on ballet and theatrical productions began in 1916 when his work was characterized by Neo-Classicism and a renewed interest in drawing and figural representation. In the 1920s, the artist and his wife, Olga (whom he had married in 1918), continued to live in Paris, travel frequently, and spent their summers at the beach. From 1925 into the 1930s, Picasso was involved to a certain degree with the Surrealists, and from the fall of 1931 he was especially interested in making sculpture. In 1932, Picasso's fame increased markedly through large exhibitions at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, the Kunsthaus Zürich, and the publication of the first volume of Christian Zervos's Catalogue Raisonné.
By 1936, the Spanish Civil War had profoundly affected Picasso, the expression of which culminated in his painting Guernica (1937, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid). Picasso's association with the Communist Party began in 1944 while he was living in the South of France. Among the enormous number of Picasso exhibitions that were held during the artist's lifetime, those at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1939 and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1955 were most significant. In 1961, the artist married Jacqueline Roque, and they moved to Mougins. There Picasso continued his prolific work in painting, drawing, prints, ceramics, and sculpture until his death in 1973.
