PABLO PICASSO

(1881-1973)

Born in Malaga, Spain.

Studied in Barcelona and made his first visit to Paris in 1900  where settled permanently in 1904, and soon made friendship with Apollinaire, Matisse, Braque and Max Jacob.

In 1911 stayed with Braque at Céret in the Pyrénées Orientales, during his Cubist period.

After his visit to Rome he returned to his Neo-Classical style for a short period before his decision to go to Spain in 1934.

And in 1937 he painted one of his most important works, Guernica, an immediate reaction to the bombing of that town during the Spanish civil war.

In 1946 he was working at Vallauris, near Grasse, doing pottery amongst painting, drawing  and sculpture (l'homme avec l'agneau).

His evolution as an artist was remarquable. In the early years assimilated the elements of the 19th century art until Impressionism. In 1903 began his period bleue and two years later his period rose just a few years until enter, in collaboration with Braque, into Cubism. A style with its new conception of space and form, with capital importance at that time.

And under his influence Cubism passed from its analytical to its synthetic phase.

After his stay in Rome he achieved a more plastic, more expressive style. His hand succeded at everything  touched, even. Only pure abstraction is absent from his work.

Picasso as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, stage designer and poet was a genius, dominating, as it symbolizes, the whole artistic life of the XX century.

"woman in a plummed hat",  1901

"woman with a crow",  1904 

"portrait of a young woman",  1903

"Moulin de la Galette",    1900

"the old fisherman" (Salmeron),   1895

"Yo Picasso",   1901

"portrait of the artist's mother",   1896