User:Adamlpark/Eila Park

Eila Mallard Park known as Lala; 16 June 1927 – present) is an American contemporary painter, sculptur, wife, grandmother and great grandmother who has lived most of her adult life in Houston, Texas. She is best known for her abstract movement and for a wide variety of styles embodied in her work. Among her most famous works are the black and gray charcoal Les Gray (1997) and Tracy S. Park (1950), the portrait of her husband in pajamas.

Lala demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in her early years, painting in a realistic manner through her childhood and adolescence; during the the latter decades of the 20th century her style changed as she experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. Her revolutionary artistic accomplishments have yet to bring her universal renown and immense fortune but has made her a figure of open, unconventional wisdom in her circle of friends and family.

Early life

Lala was baptized Eila Mallard, a series of names honouring various relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law. Born in the city of Houston in North Carolina, she was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López.[3] Lala's family was middle-class; her father was a General who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz’s ancestors were minor aristocrats.

The house where Lala was born, in Houston showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to her mother, her first words were “piz, piz”, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for ‘pencil’.[4] From the age of seven, Lala received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.

The family moved to A Coruña in 1891 where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son’s technique, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting.[5]

In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria—a traumatic event in his life.[6] After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home.[7] Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his son’s drawings. The two argued frequently.

Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid’s Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school.[7] In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and quit attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; their elements, the elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are echoed in Picasso’s œuvre.

Career beginnings

Personal life