Pablo Picasso


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 Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno
Crispin Crispiniano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco Picasso y Lopez.
His father was Josˇ Ruiz y Blasco; his mother Maria Picasso y Lopez. In his
early years he signed his name Ruiz Blasco after his father, but decided to
use his mother's name from about 1901 on.

Picasso was born in Malaga, 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 poete," as he quipped to his friends.

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 Andre Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Gertrude
Stein and others, he usually maintained a number of mistresses in addition
to his wife or primary partner.

Picasso's most famous work is probably his depiction of the German bombing
of Guernica, Spain. 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, and is now in Madrid --
Picasso stipulated that the painting should not return to Spain until
democracy was restored in that country.

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, extensive academic training, and a ferocious work-ethic.

Early Life

Picasso's father Don Josˇ Ruiz y Blasco was himself a painter and for most
of his life was a professor of art at Spanish colleges.

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 Sabartˇs, 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

It is true that 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. Throughout his life, Picasso also frequented bordellos, and 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 Thˇr¸se 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 Thˇr¸se, and fathered a
daughter, Maya, with her. Marie Thˇr¸se 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 1945, Picasso began to keep company with a
young art student, Fran¨oise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and
had two children together, Claude, and Paloma. Uniquely among Picasso's
women, Fran¨oise 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 Fran¨oise'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
Fran¨oise. Fran¨oise 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
Fran¨oise 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, Fran¨oise 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-espressionism, 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-Rh™ne. 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
Musˇe Picasso in Paris.

In 1999, Picasso's Les Noces de Pierrette (The Marriage of Pierrette) sold
for more than $51 million USD.