Spanish Painter Pablo Ruiz Picasso

(Pablo Ruiz Picasso; Málaga, 1881 – Moulins, France, 1973) Spanish painter. 

Picasso’s significance does not end with the founding of cubism, a revolutionary trend that definitively broke with traditional representation by eliminating the unique perspective and point of view. Throughout his long career, Pablo Picasso incessantly explored new paths and influenced all facets of 20th century art, embodying the restlessness and receptivity of the contemporary artist like no other. His total dedication to creative work and his vital personality, on the other hand, would never take him away from the problems of his time; One of his masterpieces, Guernica (1937), is the best illustration of his condition as a committed artist.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso Father Name Is José Ruiz Blasco

Son of the also artist José Ruiz Blasco, in 1895 he moved with his family to Barcelona, ​​where the young painter surrounded himself with a group of artists and writers, including the painters Ramón Casas and Santiago Rusiñol , with whom he used to meet. at the Els Quatre Gats bar . Between 1901 and 1904, Pablo Picasso alternated his residence between Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, while his painting entered the stage called the blue period , strongly influenced by symbolism. In the spring of 1904, Picasso decided to move permanently to Paris and settle in a studio on the banks of the Seine.

In the French capital he became friends, among others, with the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob and with the playwright André Salmon; meanwhile, his painting underwent a new evolution, characterized by a color palette tending to earth colors and pink ( pink period ). Shortly after arriving in Paris, he came into contact with peripheral personalities of the artistic and bohemian world, such as the American brothers Leo and Gertrude Stein , or the one who would forever be his dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.

In late 1906, Pablo Picasso began work on a large-format composition that was to change the course of 20th century art: Les demoiselles d’Avignon . In this masterpiece numerous influences converged, among which the main ones are African and Iberian art and elements taken from El Greco and Cézanne. Under the constant influence of the latter, and in the company of another young painter, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso entered into a review of a good part of the plastic heritage in force since the Renaissance, especially in the field of the pictorial representation of the volume. The geometric patterns eliminate spatial depth and introduce time as a dimension by simultaneously combining different points of view: it was the beginning of Cubism.

Picasso and Braque developed this style in a first phase called analytical (1909-1912). In 1912 they introduced an element of flexibility in the form of paper cutouts and other materials applied directly to the canvas, a technique they called collage . The admission into the exclusive circle of cubism of the Spanish painter Juan Gris led to the synthetic stage of this style, marked by a richer color range and a multiplicity of materials and references.

Between 1915 and the mid-1920s, Picasso abandoned the rigors of Cubism to enter a new figurative stage, within the framework of a reunion between classicism and the growing influence of what the artist called his “Mediterranean origins.” Married since 1919 to the Russian dancer Olga Koklova and father of one son, Paulo, Pablo Picasso became interested in sculpture as a result of his meeting in 1928 with the Catalan artist Julio González; between the two they introduced important innovations, such as the use of wrought iron. In 1935 his daughter Maya was born, the result of a new sentimental relationship with Marie-Therèse Walter, with whom Pablo Picasso coexisted openly despite being married to Olga Koklova; From 1936 on, both had to share the painter with a third woman, the photographer Dora Maar.

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to World War II , pushed him to greater political awareness, the result of which is one of his most universally admired works, the large mural Guernica (1937). The reduction to the minimum of the chromaticism, the dislocation of the figures and their heartbreaking symbolism make up an impressive denunciation of the bombing of the German aviation, which on April 26, 1937 devastated this Basque town in an action in support of the troops of the coup general Francisco Frank. In 1943 he met Françoise Gilot, with whom he would have two children, Claude and Paloma. Three years later, Pablo Picasso left Paris to settle in Antibes, where he incorporated ceramics into his favorite supports.

In the 1950s he made numerous series on great classical works of painting, which he reinterpreted as a tribute. In 1961 Pablo Picasso remarried Jacqueline Roque; it would be their last significant relationship. Already a legend in life and the epitome of the avant-garde, the artist and Jacqueline retired to the Château de Vouvenargues, where the creator continued to work tirelessly until the day of his death.

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