Pablo Ruiz y Picasso (1881-1973)

Spanish painter and sculptor

The Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881. In 1895 he moved to Barcelona and started a study at the School of Fine Arts a year later. In 1897 he was accepted by the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid.

Paris

Shortly after the turn of the century he moved to Paris. His paintings of day-to-day life of very poor people earned him widespread fame. These paintings were commonly referred to as products of his "blue period" (1901-1904). In 1902 he exhibited in the Galerie Berthe Weill.
The blue period was followed by the "rose period" (1905-1908), which depict mainly circus life. In 1906 he met Henri Matisse during his summer vacation in Spain.
Picasso also became acquainted with André Derain and Georges Braque. He got a contract with the Kahnweiler Gallery in 1907. He studied Cézanne's work and made his African sculptures. In 1909, together with Braque, Picasso developed cubism.

Ballet La Parade

Pablo Picasso collaborated with Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev and Erik Satie on the ballet La Parade in 1917. Around 1920 Picasso painted his first neo-classical paintings. He met André Breton in 1923 and participated in the first surrealist exhibition in Paris two years later.

Guernica

Picasso painted "Guernica" in response to a government commission for the Spanish Pavilion in the Exhibition Universelle in Paris in 1937. His first retrospective in the Museum of Modern Art of New York was organized in 1939.

Vallauris and Cannes

In the late 1940s he became a communist and moved to Vallauris and later Cannes. Many of Picasso's later pictures were based on works by great masters of the past. He kept involved in painting, but also sculpture, ceramics and collage. In 1963 the Picasso museum in Barcelona was opened.
Pablo Picasso died in 1973 in Mougins.