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Famous
Artists > Pablo Picasso
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Pablo
Picasso
Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso,
(October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was one of the recognized masters
of 20th century art.
Overview
His name in full was Pablo (or Pablito) Diego José Santiago
Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano de los
Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco y Picasso
López. His father was José Ruiz y Blasco; his mother,
María Picasso y López. In his early years he signed
his name Ruiz Blasco after his father but, from about 1901 on, switched
to using his mother's name.
Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, and is probably most famous
as the founder, along with Georges Braque, of Cubism. However in a
long life he produced a wide and varied body of work, the best-known
being the Blue Period works which feature moving depictions of acrobats,
harlequins, prostitutes, beggars and artists.
While Picasso was primarily a painter (in fact he believed that an
artist must paint in order to be considered a true artist), he also
worked with small ceramic and bronze sculptures, collage and even
produced some poetry. "Je suis aussi un poète," as
he quipped to his friends.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings
in the world. On May 4, 2004 Picasso's painting Garcon à la
Pipe was sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's, thus establishing
a new price record (see also List of most expensive paintings). |
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Picasso hated to be
alone when he wasn't working. In Paris, in addition to having a distinguished
coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including
André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Gertrude Stein
and others, he usually maintained a number of mistresses in addition
to his wife or primary partner.
In the 1915 photograph seen here is friends (left to right): Manuel
Ortiz de Zárate, Henri-Pierre Roché (in uniform), Marie
Vassilieff, Max Jacob and Pablo Picasso.
Picasso's most famous work is probably his depiction of the German
bombing of Guernica, Spain; the Guernica (painting). This large canvas
embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war.
The painting of the picture was captured in a series of photographs
by Picasso's most famous lover, Dora Maar, a distinguished artist
in her own right. A Nazi officer is supposed to have come to his door
brandishing a postcard and demanding, "Did you do this?"
"No," Picasso is supposed to have replied, "you did."
The Guernica hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art for many years;
Picasso stipulated that the painting should not return to Spain until
democracy was restored in that country. In 1981 the Guernica was returned
to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992
the painting became one of the main attractions in Madrid's Museo
de La Reina Sofía (Queen Sofía's Museum) when it opened.
As certain works, for example the Cubist pieces, tend to be associated
in the public mind with Picasso, it is important to realize how talented
Picasso was as a painter and draughtsman. He was capable of working
with oils, watercolours, pastels, charcoal, pencil, ink, or indeed
any medium with equally high facility. With his most extreme cubist
works he came close to deconstructing a complex scene into just a
few geometric shapes while at the same time being capable of photo-realistic
pen and ink sketches of his friends. Picasso had a massive talent
for almost any artistic endeavor he turned his mind to, despite limited
formal academic training (he finished only one year of his course
of study at the Royal Academy in Madrid), and a ferocious work-ethic.
Early life
Picasso's father,
José Ruiz y Blasco, was himself a painter and for most of his
life was a professor of art at Spanish colleges. It is from Don José
that Picasso learned the basics of formal academic art training –
figure drawing, and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art
schools thoughout his childhood, often those his father taught at,
he never finished his college level course of study at the Royal Academy
of San Fernando in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.
The Picasso Museum in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works,
created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection
of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona
days, and for many years, Picasso's personal secretary. There are
many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his
father's tutelage that clearly demonstrate his firm grounding in classical
techniques, as well as rarely seen works from his old age.
Picasso and pacifism
Picasso remained neutral during the Spanish Civil War, World War I
and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Picasso
never commented on this but encouraged the idea that it was because
he was a pacifist. Some of his contemporaries though (including Braque)
felt that this neutrality had more to do with cowardice than principle.
As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion
to fight against the invading Germans in either world war. In the
Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional
and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join
either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Franco
and the Fascists through his art he did not take up arms against them.
He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during
his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with
activists within it. No political movement seemed to compel his support
to any great degree.
After the Second World War, Picasso joined the French Communist party,
and even attended an international peace conference in Poland. But
party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic
cooled Picasso's interest in Communist politics.
Personal life
Picasso had a long string of lovers, four children by three women,
and two wives. In the early years of the 20th century, Picasso, still
a struggling youth, began a long term relationship with Fernande Olivier.
It is she who appears in many of the Blue and Rose period paintings.
After garnering fame and some fortune, Picasso left Fernande for Marcelle
Humbert, whom Picasso called Eva. When it became clear that Eva was
dying, Picasso left her as well. Picasso frequented brothels throughout
his life, and also had numerous affairs.
In 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's
troupe. Olga introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties,
and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s
Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a sometime
motorcycle racer, sometime chauffeur to his father, and dissolute.
Olga's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian
tendencies, and the two lived in a state of near constant conflict.
In 1927 Picasso met the then underage (17) Marie Thérèse
Walter, and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to
Olga soon ended in separation, as French law required an even division
of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Olga
to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Olga's
death in 1955.
Picasso carried on a long standing affair with Marie Thérèse,
and fathered a daughter, Maya, with her. Marie Thérèse
lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and eventually
hanged herself after Picasso's death.
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion
and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 30s and early
40s, and it was Dora who documented the painting of Guernica. Like
all the women in his life, Dora was cruelly abused emotionally by
the narcissistic Picasso.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company
with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually
became lovers, and had two children together, Claude, and Paloma.
Uniquely among Picasso's women, Françoise eventually left Picasso
in 1953 because of his abusive treatment, and infidelities. This came
as a severe blow to Picasso, who was used to submissive women who
lived for whatever scraps of affection or attention he deigned to
give them.
He went through a difficult period after Françoise's departure,
coming to terms with his advancing age, and his perception that he
was an old man, now in his seventies, who was no longer attractive,
but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from
this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish
counterpoint to the beautiful young girl.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. Jacqueline
worked at the Madoura Pottery, where Picasso made and painted ceramics.
The two remained together for the rest of Picasso's life, marrying
in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge
against Françoise. Françoise had been seeking a legal
means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma.
With Picasso's encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then
husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children's rights.
Picasso then secretly married Jacqueline after Françoise had
filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Later works
In his 80s and 90s, Picasso, no longer quite the energetic dynamo
he had been in his youth, became more, and more reclusive. His second
wife, Jacqueline Roque, screened all but the most important visitors,
and closest friends, even excluding Picasso's two children, Claude
and Paloma, both by his former partner, the painter Françoise
Gilot.
This reclusive existence intensified after Picasso underwent surgery
for a prostate condition in 1965. This surgery is rumored to have
left Picasso largely impotent. To a man for whom sexual adventure
was such an important part of life, this was a serious life change,
and Picasso seems to have dealt with it by redoubling his already
prolific artistic output.
Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring,
his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971
he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate engravings.
At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies
of an impotent old man, or the slapdash works of an artist who was
past his prime. One long time admirer, Douglas Cooper called them
"the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man in the antechamber
of death". Only a decade later, after Picasso's death, when the
rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did
the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered
neo-expressionism, and was, as usual, ahead of his time.
Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at Mougins, France, and was interred
at Castle Vauvenargues' park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône.
Jacqueline prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending
the funeral.
At the time of his death, Picasso, by now a multi-millionaire, owned
a vast quantity of his own work, consisting of personal favorites
which he had kept off the art market, or which he had not needed to
sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work
of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, like Henri Matisse,
with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his
death duties, or estate tax to the French state were paid in the form
of his works, and others from his collection. These works form the
core of the immense, and representative collection of the Musée
Picasso in Paris. And recently in 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated
a museum dedicated to him, in his hometown of Malaga, Spain, called
the Museo Picasso Málaga.
In 1999, Picasso's Les Noces de Pierrette (The Marriage of Pierrette)
sold for more than USD $51 million. |
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