User:Mrdrawerguy/Pablo Picasso

Art is subjective. It can come from anywhere or anything and can be viewed by anyone as an interpretation of one thing or another. It's the chance to view the world through another person's eyes and experience a little bit more than your usual range of emotions and ideas. Art could be interpreted badly by someone, but all that really matters is for it to be interpreted. Art is also a chance to express yourself For a chef, food is art. For a scientist, knowledge is art, and for this man, LIFE was art. A wise man once said that "to draw, you must close your eyes and sing" and that "painting is another way of keeping a diary". You may know this painter from paintings such as "Guernica" or "The Weeping Woman", or you may know him from being the inspiration for a proto-cubism art project printed on the inside cover of a Crayola construction paper book. However you know him, he was a Spanish Frenchman with a revolutionary artistic style that has shaped the world we draw today.

Pablo Picasso, also known as Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad (Martyr Patricio Clito) Ruiz y Picasso (25 October, 1881 -- 8 April, 1973) was a painter, sculptor, playwright, poet, and visual artist who was highly influential in the world of art, and helped found art styles such as cubism and surrealism.

Childhood
Picasso was born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso in Malaga, Spain on the 25th of October, 1881, to Maria Picasso y Lopez and Jose Ruiz y Blasco. Because of spanish naming customs, the paternal family name (Ruiz) comes before the maternal family name (Picasso). Picasso was born an only child until his sisters, Lola and Conchita Picasso, came along. When he was born, the midwife thought he was a stillborn and was laid on a table to attend to his mother. During that time, his uncle (a doctor), was smoking a cigar and blew a large puff of smoke into Picasso's face. Picasso was a very serious child, with piercing black eyes with people considered a "mark of greatness". It is told by his parents that his first word was "piz", a short form of the word "lapiz", meaning "pencil" in Spanish. Picasso started drawing at a very young age; Picasso's father, Jose, would give Picasso drawing lessons and would teach him everything he knew from the word of art, seeing as he was a painter and an art teacher. Picasso's father would often bring Picasso to bullfights as a child, and Picasso would love playing "bullfight" with his friends. However, Picasso would often rather draw than play with his friends. For a while, Picasso would be allowed (and more than capable) to finish his father's paintings, but Picasso's first published painting was "Le Picador", painted 1890, at the age of nine. Pablo later claimed that at the age of 12, he could draw like Raphael. Oddly enough, Picasso was also a terrible student at school. He would blatantly ignore his schoolteacher and would instead doodle in his sketchbook, though he would often get in trouble for it. As Picasso said later in life: For being a bad student, I was banished to the 'calaboose,' a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I could have stayed there forever, drawing without stopping.

In 1892, Picasso moved to La Coruna with his family. He applied to the School of Fine and Applied Arts and got accepted there. In 1894, at the age of 13, Picasso started creating oil paintings of his family, which he starting selling at a small scale in 1895. That same year is when his sister Conchita (of whom one of Picasso's love-children would be named) died of diphtheria. After that event, his previous Catholicism had turned into atheism. After her death, Picasso decided to take his painting skills to the next level by going to the famous School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, a place where he had just recently moved. The school would normally accept people much older than Picasso, but the entrance exam he took was so extraordinary that they granted him an exception and accepted him. Unfortunately, Picasso wouldn’t comply with the strictness of the school and would skip it to roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching what he saw. When he was there, he would also hang out at a pub/restaurant called "Els Quatre Gats", where he would talk with the artists and writers there about new art forms etc. He became an out-of-the-box thinker when it came to art. When Picasso was sixteen, he moved to Madrid to go to another prestigious art school but would bail as everything was too strict and "too boring". He would instead roam the streets painting beggars, prostitutes, etc. As you can see, Picasso did not like school very much.

Adult Life
After exploring Madrid, Picasso came back to Barcelona to meet up with his friend Carlos Casagemas (of whom he met at "El Quatre Gats") at the age of 19. They moved to Paris together, but unfortunately, Carlos passed away later that year (see "Blue Period" below). Carlos was infatuated with a girl and when she rejected him, that led to a subsequent attempt to murder her, thus causing him to kill himself. Afterwards, Picasso lived with a poet named Max Jacob in Paris. Max taught him the language and literature of France. While staying there, Picasso would sleep in the day and stay up at night working, unlike Max. They would often struggle with poverty, so Picasso would burn his sketches and paintings to create heat for the small room they lived in. A year later, back in Madrid, Francisco de Asis Soler (an anarchist friend of Picasso) founded a magazine called Arte Joven (Young Art) in Madrid. Picasso would be the primary illustrator, and he would sign his name as Picasso on every illustration, as opposed to Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.

Blue Period
After Carlos Casagemas passed away. Picasso became very depressed and started what would now be known as the "Blue Period" (1901-1904). Picasso once said that painting was a blind man's profession, as the artist paints what he feels and not what he sees. This is exemplified in this period of time where all Picasso felt was "blue"-ness and sorrows over the tragic loss of his friend. Blue signifies cold, despair, depression and misery, and the hopelessness portrayed in his paintings at the time. This period is also said to dramatize the artist as an outcast of society, as Picasso was far from home and living in extreme poverty, unappreciated. Some famous paintings from this time period are "The Old Guitarist" and "The Blue Room", the former having gotten exposure recently for hiding a secret portrait of a bearded man.

Rose Period
After mourning for three years in Picasso's "Blue Period", Picasso started to feel happy again in what is called had "Rose Period" (1904-1906). He had just fell in love with a model named Fernande Olivier. Plus, his art dealer Ambroise Vollard had given Picasso newly-found fame within the art world. Picasso starts painting with warm colours again and starts painting with a fine array of beiges, reds and yellows. Picasso starts drawing more nude women, clowns and harlequins and less sadness and poverty. It is said that although the "Blue Period" is far more popular with the public today, the "Rose Period" was more renown for its influence on modern art. Within this period, Picasso started to develop his symbolic art style.

Cubist Movement
Early in the 20th century, Pablo Picasso painted "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon". This painting was a revolutionary piece of work because it introduced a new way of looking at the world. This was the beginning of the cubist movement. Picasso and his friend Georges Braque created this new art form that combined all angles of a scene and put them together like a puzzle. The distortion and style of "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon" was largely based on African sculptures. Europeans artists would paint lots of African sculptures at that time in the short-lived African-Influenced Period. Picasso was first introduced to African art in the museum in the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris. It is told that there are two types of cubisms, being Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. Analytic cubism is based more on classical works, and synthetic cubism is further away from the artistic typicalities of the time period.

Classicism and Surrealism
Beginning in 1927, cubism had stemmed another famous art form which helped influence modern art as well: surrealism. It came a philosophical art form and Picasso decided to catch up in it. Picasso's most famous surrealist painting was called "Guernica". It was an anti-war painting that was based on the bombing of Guernica in World War I (see right). When the bombing happened, Picasso was outraged with the inhumanity of the situation, so he painted this picture to represent to torture. It features a minotaur and other people in a distressed and anguished state. It was received very well and nowadays it is considered one of the best antiwar paintings ever conceived.

Personal Life
Picasso was a womanizer and had two wives throughout his years (Olga Khokhlova, Jacqueline Roque) and five other partners that he was romantically involved with (Fernande Olivier, Eva Gouel, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Genevieve Laporte). This is said to have stemmed from when Picasso was 13 or 14, where he followed his father to a brothel and lost his virginity there. Picasso had a weiner dog named Lump and he fathered four children: Paul, Maya, Claude and Paloma.

Death and Legacy
Picasso once believed that his artwork could keep him alive. Unfortunately, on April 8th, 1973, Pablo Picasso died of a heart attack. He never had a will, and his estate tax to the French state was paid in his paintings. These paintings were later given to the Musée Picasso in Paris. At the time of his death, Picasso kept most of his paintings because he didn't want to sell them on the art market. In 2003, Picasso's family founded a museum dedicated to Picasso in Malaga, Spain (Picasso's birthplace). The Museu Picasso features many early works of Picasso, including many that reveal Picasso's take on classical techniques. Picasso's legacy lives on today, and he is told to be the most influential painter in the 20th century. He is currently known as possibly the famous famous painter there ever has been in art history. Because, as Picasso once said:

When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as the pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.