Pablo Picasso

(1881-1973)

 

 

 

“Everyone wants to understand art. Why don’t we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only an insignificant part of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can’t explain them people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.”
Picasso

 

The Beginning: Childhood and Youth 1881-1901

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25, 1881 to Don José Ruiz Blasco (1838-1939) and Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez (1855-1939). The family at the time resided in Málaga, Spain, where Don José taught drawing at the local school of Fine Arts and Crafts. The first ten years of Pablo’s life passed in Málaga. The family was far from rich, and when 2 other children were born (Lola (Dolorès) in 1884 and  Concepción (Conchita) in 1887) it was often difficult to make both ends meet. When Don José was offered a better-paid job, he accepted it immediately, and the Picassos moved to the provincial capital of La Coruna, where they lived for the next four years. There, in 1892, Pablo joined the school of Fine Arts, but mostly his father taught him. By 1894 Pablo’s works became so perfect for the boy of his age that his father recognized Pablo’s amazing talent, handed him his brush and palette and declared that he would never paint again.
In 1895 Don José got a professorship at “La Lonja”, the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and the family settled there. Pablo passed his entrance examination on an advanced course in classical art and still life at the same school. He was the best than senior students in their final exam projects.
“Unlike in music, there are no child prodigies in painting. What people regard as premature genius is the genius of childhood. It gradually disappears as they get older. It is possible for such a child to become a real painter one day, perhaps even a great painter. But he would have to start right from the beginning. So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naivety. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.” Picasso.

In 1896 Pablo’s first large “academic’ oil painting, “The First Communion”, appeared in an exhibition in Barcelona. His second large oil painting, "Science and Charity” (1897) received honorable mention in the national exhibition of fine art in Madrid and was awarded a gold medal in a competition at Málaga. Pablo’s uncle sent him money for further studying in Madrid, and the youth passed entrance examination for advanced courses at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. But already in the winter he abandoned the classes. His everyday visits to the Prado seemed to him much more important. At first he copied the old masters, trying to imitate their style; later they would be the source of ideas for original paintings of his own, and he would re-arrange them again and again in different variations.
Picasso’s time in Madrid, however, came to a sudden end. In summer 1898, caught with scarlet fever, he came back to Barcelona, then, to regain health, he went to the mountain village of Horta de Ebro and spent long time there to return home only in spring 1899.

In Barcelona he frequented Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats), the café, where artists and intellectuals used to meet. He made friends, among others, with the young painter Casagemas, and the poet Sabartés, who would later be his secretary and lifelong friend. In Quatre Gats Picasso met the vivid representatives of Spanish modernism, such as Rusinol and Nonell; he was very enthusiastic about new directions in art, he said farewell to “classicism” and started his enduring search and experiments. The relations with his parents strained, they could not understand and forgive him the betrayal of “classicism”.

In October 1900 Picasso and Casagemas left for Paris, the most significant artistic center at the time, and opened studio at the Montmartre. Art dealer Pedro Manach offered Picasso his first contract: 150 Francs per month in exchange for pictures. His first Paris picture “Le Moulin de la Galette” (Guggenheim Museum, New York).  In December he departed for Barcelona, Málaga, and Madrid where he became co-editor of Arte Joven. But already in May 1901 he returned to Paris. This restless life with constant travels  continued all his life, though  later he would become more or less settled, but never finally settled.

 

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