Pablo Picasso

Check out any list of top Spanish artists and it is doubtless that Pablo Picasso’s name will appear close to the top. Destined to become an artist from an early age, Picasso was to become the co-creator of the Cubist movement, and changed the direction of Europe modern art forever.

Picasso was born on 25th October 1881 in Malaga. His father, José Ruiz Blasco, was an artist and teacher, and the family were reasonably wealthy. When Picasso began drawing at an early age, his talent was instantly recognisable. His father was determined to nurture the latent genius and ensured that the young man was tutored in all of the basic elements necessary for a formal artist of their time.

In 1891, Picasso and his family moved to La Coruňa in the north of Spain. There, they spent four years – Blasco worked as a professor, while Picasso honed his skills taking inspiration from the rugged Galician landscapes and developing his portrait work. The death of Picasso’s younger sister from diptheria brought an end to this chapter of the family’s life and they again moved, this time to Barcelona.

Picasso’s education continued in Barcelona, and later in Madrid, although by 1989, he felt he could no longer learn anything new from art school. Travelling to Paris in 1900, he began a period of his life which was plagued with poverty, yet he was determined to make a name for himself. Artists such as Toulouse Lautrec were to prove influential and Picasso moved closer to his goals.

Over the next few years, Picasso began to move away from the classic style art that he had learnt in school, and started to bring definition to new, modern art. Working with Georges Braque, he developed Cubism. This new style of painting and sculpture reduced natural forms into basic abstract or geometric shapes, challenging perceptions of the art and reality. One of the best known and most moving pieces of Picasso’s work from this time is the enormous Guernica, a comment on the Spanish Civil War and testing of bombs in the town of the same name.

Pablo Picasso died of heart failure at his home in Mougins, France, in April 1973. An intense man who had made art his life, Picasso’s mark on culture is indelible, and contemporary artists continue to use his work as a point of reference.