Pablo Picasso

Life and legacy

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, in 1881, the son of an art teacher. He showed extraordinary talent from childhood - legend holds that his father, upon seeing the thirteen-year-old Pablo's work, handed over his own brushes and palette, declaring his son had surpassed him. After training in Barcelona and Madrid, Picasso moved to Paris in 1904, settling in the artists' quarter of Montmartre at the Bateau-Lavoir studio.

His early career moved through distinct phases: the melancholic Blue Period (1901-1904), dominated by paintings of beggars, blind figures, and the destitute rendered in somber blues; and the warmer Rose Period (1904-1906), featuring circus performers and harlequins. Then, in 1907, Picasso painted "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," a jagged, confrontational depiction of five nude women whose fractured forms drew on African art and Iberian sculpture. The painting shocked even his closest friends but broke open the path to Cubism.

Working closely with Georges Braque from 1908 to 1914, Picasso developed Cubism - first Analytic Cubism, which fragmented objects into geometric facets seen from multiple viewpoints simultaneously, then Synthetic Cubism, which introduced collage elements like newspaper and wallpaper. Cubism was the most radical reconception of pictorial space since the Renaissance and influenced virtually every subsequent modern art movement, from Futurism to Abstract Expressionism.

Picasso's range was staggering. He moved between styles and media with restless energy: neoclassical figures in the 1920s, Surrealist-influenced distortions in the 1930s, monumental sculpture, ceramics, and thousands of prints and drawings. His 1937 painting "Guernica," created in response to the Nazi German bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War, became the twentieth century's most powerful anti-war image. During the German occupation of Paris, Picasso remained in the city, refusing to flee, and joined the French Communist Party in 1944.

Picasso spent his later decades in the south of France, producing work at a prodigious pace until his death in 1973 at age ninety-one. His total output is estimated at around 50,000 works. He transformed sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics as decisively as painting. For better or worse, Picasso established the model of the modern artist as restless innovator, public personality, and cultural force.

Key accomplishments

• Co-founded Cubism with Georges Braque, the most influential art movement of the twentieth century
• Painted "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), a watershed moment in the history of modern art
• Created "Guernica" (1937), the defining anti-war artwork of the twentieth century
• Produced an estimated 50,000 works across painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and drawing
• Pioneered collage and mixed-media techniques in Synthetic Cubism

Timeline

The dated lines from the record above, in order, with Pablo Picasso's age worked out from the birth year (1881).

1. 1881Born October 25, 1881, Málaga, Spain
2. 1907Painted "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), a watershed moment in the history of modern art (around age 26)
3. 1937Created "Guernica" (1937), the defining anti-war artwork of the twentieth century (around age 56)
4. 1973Died April 8, 1973, Mougins, France

Quotes

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Attributed; earliest citation in 1956 Time magazine profile, exact provenance uncertain

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

"Picasso Speaks," The Arts, May 1923

Related figures

Where Pablo Picasso sits in the atlas

• Era: The Modern Era (~1880-1965), one of 16 figures filed there
• Born 1881, the 116th of 125 figures in the full list by birth year.
• Cities: Paris, Rome
• Collection: Artists & Composers

Contemporaries

30 other figures in the atlas were alive at some point during Pablo Picasso's lifetime (1881-1973). These are the longest overlaps.

• Coco Chanel (1883-1971): both alive for 88 years, 1883 to 1971
• Winston Churchill (1874-1965): both alive for 84 years, 1881 to 1965
• Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969): both alive for 79 years, 1890 to 1969
• Albert Einstein (1879-1955): both alive for 74 years, 1881 to 1955
• Alexander Fleming (1881-1955): both alive for 74 years, 1881 to 1955
• Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945): both alive for 63 years, 1882 to 1945
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961): both alive for 62 years, 1899 to 1961
• Nikola Tesla (1856-1943): both alive for 62 years, 1881 to 1943

Others connected with the same cities

Figures not already listed on this page, nearest in time first.

More from The Modern Era

Figures from the same era born closest in time to Pablo Picasso.

• Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), The First Lady of the Sky
• Alan Turing (1912-1954), The Father of Computer Science
• Rosa Parks (1913-2005), The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
• Anne Frank (1929-1945), The Voice of the Holocaust
• Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), The Dream of Justice