Pablo Picasso: The Life Story Behind the Art Revolutionary

Pablo Picasso is the most famous artist of the twentieth century, and he is also the most restless. He did not have one style, or one period, or one way of painting. He had many, and he changed them as often as he changed his mind, which was often. He painted in blue, he painted in pink, he broke the human face into cubes and triangles, he made sculptures from scrap metal, he made ceramics, he made prints, and he did it all with a confidence that made the art world follow him, even when it did not understand where he was going. He once said that he did not seek, he found, and that sentence captures him perfectly: he was not looking for a style, he was finding new ones, again and again, for seventy years.

He was born on 25 October 1881 in Malaga, a city in southern Spain, to Jose Ruiz Blasco, an art teacher, and Maria Picasso Lopez, and he was a child prodigy, a boy who could draw before he could write, and whose first word, according to family legend, was pencil. He was trained by his father, he studied in Barcelona and in Madrid, and he moved to Paris when he was nineteen, where he lived in poverty, in a cold studio, and where he began the career that would make him the most famous artist alive. He died on 8 April 1973 in France, at the age of ninety-one, a rich man, a famous man, and a man who had changed art forever.

What makes Picasso extraordinary is not only his talent, but his refusal to stand still. Most artists find a style that works, and they stay with it, because it sells, and because it is safe. Picasso found a style, and then he abandoned it, and found another, and then another, and he did it for his whole life. He invented Cubism, with Georges Braque, he painted Guernica, the great anti-war painting, and he produced more than twenty thousand works, more than any other artist in history. He was a revolutionary, and he was also a man of great appetites, great loves, and great contradictions, and his life is as fascinating as his art.

A Child Prodigy in Malaga and Barcelona

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on 25 October 1881 in Malaga, Spain, the first child of Jose Ruiz Blasco, a painter and an art teacher, and Maria Picasso Lopez. He was a difficult birth, and the story is told that he was thought to be stillborn, until his uncle blew cigar smoke into his face and he cried, a dramatic beginning for a dramatic life. He grew up in a house full of art, and his father taught him to draw from a very young age, giving him lessons in anatomy, in perspective, and in the craft of painting. By the time he was nine, he was painting in oils, and by the time he was thirteen, he was better than his father, who, according to the story, gave up painting himself and gave his brushes to his son, because he knew he could not match him.

The family moved to La Coruna, and then to Barcelona, where Picasso studied at the School of Fine Arts, and where he was admitted at the age of fourteen, after passing an entrance examination that was supposed to take a month, in a single day. He was a brilliant student, but he was also a rebellious one, and he did not like the formal teaching, the rules, and the discipline of the school. He preferred to wander the streets of Barcelona, to draw the people he saw, and to visit the cafes where artists and writers met. Barcelona in the 1890s was a city of change, of modernism, and of new ideas, and Picasso absorbed them all.

He moved to Madrid in 1897 to study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, but he stayed only a short time, because he was bored, and because he preferred to visit the Prado Museum, where he studied the great Spanish painters, Velazquez, Goya, and El Greco, and where he learned from their work. He returned to Barcelona, and he became part of a group of young artists and writers who met at a cafe called Els Quatre Gats, the Four Cats, and who talked about art, about poetry, and about the future. It was a bohemian life, poor, exciting, and free, and Picasso loved it, even though he had no money, and even though he often went hungry.

In 1900, when he was nineteen, he made his first trip to Paris, the capital of art, and he fell in love with the city, with its museums, its cafes, and its freedom. He returned to Barcelona, and then he moved to Paris permanently in 1904, settling in a rundown building called the Bateau-Lavoir, the laundry boat, in Montmartre, where many young artists lived in cold, cramped studios, and where Picasso lived in poverty, with his friends, his lovers, and his art. It was the beginning of the most important period of his life.

The Blue Period and the Pink Period in Paris

In Paris, Picasso’s early work is divided into two periods, named for the colours he used. The Blue Period, from 1901 to 1904, was a time of sadness, poverty, and loneliness, and his paintings from those years are dominated by blue, by cold tones, and by subjects that are poor, lonely, and melancholic: beggars, blind men, mothers with children, and lonely figures in cafes. The most famous painting from this period is The Old Guitarist, which shows an old blind man holding a guitar, painted in shades of blue, and which captures the sadness of poverty in a way that is both beautiful and heartbreaking. The Blue Period was influenced by the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who died by suicide in 1901, and by Picasso’s own poverty, and by his sympathy for the poor people he saw around him in Paris.

The Pink Period, from 1904 to 1906, was a happier time, when Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model and an artist, who became his lover and his muse, and when he began to paint in warmer colours, in pinks, oranges, and reds, and to paint subjects that were lighter: circus performers, acrobats, and harlequins, the clowns of the circus, who became a symbol for Picasso himself, a figure who is both funny and sad, both an entertainer and an outsider. The most famous painting from this period is Family of Saltimbanques, which shows a group of circus performers standing in a desert landscape, and which is a large, melancholic, beautiful painting, and Boy with a Pipe, which shows a young boy holding a pipe, and which became one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

These two periods show Picasso as a young artist who was learning, who was experimenting, and who was finding his voice. He was not yet the revolutionary he would become, but he was already a great painter, with a gift for colour, for composition, and for capturing the inner life of his subjects. He was also a man who lived intensely, who loved passionately, and who worked constantly, producing hundreds of paintings, drawings, and prints in a few short years. Paris was his home, and it would remain his home for the rest of his life, even though he was Spanish, and even though he never became French.

Les Demoiselles and the Invention of Cubism

In 1907, Picasso painted a picture that changed art forever: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a large painting of five nude women in a brothel in Barcelona, painted in a style that was so new, so shocking, and so different from anything that had been painted before, that even his friends did not understand it. The women are painted with sharp, angular faces, with eyes that look in different directions, and with bodies that are broken into geometric shapes, like cubes and triangles. The painting was not exhibited for many years, because Picasso knew it was too radical, but it became the foundation of Cubism, the movement that would dominate modern art for the next decade.

Cubism was invented by Picasso and Georges Braque, a French artist, who worked together in Paris from 1908 to 1914, painting in a style that broke objects into geometric shapes, showed them from many angles at once, and used a limited palette of browns, greys, and blacks. It was a radical idea: a painting did not have to show the world as it looks from one point of view, but could show it as it is known, from many points of view, all at once. A face could have two eyes on one side, a table could be seen from above and from the side, and a guitar could be broken into pieces and put back together in a new way. It was difficult, it was intellectual, and it was revolutionary, and it changed the way artists thought about painting.

Picasso and Braque worked closely, and they were so close that their paintings from those years are often hard to tell apart. They invented collage, gluing paper, newspaper, and other materials onto canvas, and they invented new ways of making sculpture, using scrap metal, wood, and found objects. They were not interested in beauty in the old sense. They were interested in truth, in structure, and in the idea that art could be a new way of seeing the world, not just a copy of it. Cubism influenced not only painting, but also sculpture, architecture, literature, and music, and it became the most important movement in modern art.

The First World War ended the collaboration between Picasso and Braque, who went to fight, and Picasso’s work changed again. He returned to a more classical style, painting portraits, still lifes, and figures in a realistic way, but he never abandoned Cubism completely, and he returned to it again and again throughout his life. He was a man who could paint in many styles, and who did, often at the same time, and that versatility is one of the things that makes him unique.

Guernica, War, and the Painter as a Witness

In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German and Italian bombers, supporting the Nationalist forces of General Franco, bombed the Basque town of Guernica, killing hundreds of civilians, in an attack that shocked the world. Picasso, who was living in Paris, was asked by the Spanish Republican government to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair, and he painted Guernica, a huge black-and-white painting, eleven feet high and twenty-five feet wide, which shows the horror of the bombing in a series of powerful images: a screaming horse, a dead soldier, a mother holding her dead child, and a bull, a symbol of Spain, looking on in anguish.

Guernica is one of the most famous paintings in the world, and it is one of the most powerful anti-war statements ever made in art. It does not show the bombing itself, but the suffering it caused, and it does so in black and white, like a newspaper photograph, with no colour to soften the horror. Picasso painted it quickly, in a few weeks, and he worked on it with a fury, changing it, repainting it, and making it stronger, until it was finished. It was exhibited in Paris, and then it travelled around the world, raising money for the Spanish refugees, and it became a symbol of the fight against fascism.

After the Spanish Civil War, Picasso remained in France, and he did not return to Spain while Franco was in power, because he refused to live under a dictatorship. He continued to paint, to sculpt, and to make prints, and he became more political, joining the Communist Party after the Second World War, although he was never a doctrinaire communist, and his politics were always personal, not ideological. He painted works about war, about peace, and about the suffering of ordinary people, and he used his fame to speak out against injustice, even when it was unpopular.

During the Second World War, he lived in Paris under the German occupation, and he continued to work, although he was not allowed to exhibit, and although his work was condemned by the Nazis as degenerate art. He was visited by German officers, who asked him about Guernica, and who, according to the story, pointed to a photograph of the painting and asked, did you do that? Picasso replied, no, you did. It is a famous story, and it may not be true in every detail, but it captures his defiance, and his belief that art could be a weapon against tyranny.

The Later Years, Many Loves, and an Endless Output

After the war, Picasso moved to the south of France, first to Vallauris, where he discovered ceramics, and began to make pottery, plates, and sculptures in clay, and then to other homes in the south, where he lived with his lovers, his wives, and his children, and where he painted with an energy that seemed to increase with age. He was in his seventies, his eighties, and his nineties, and he was still painting, still sculpting, and still making art every day, as if he were a young man. He produced more than twenty thousand works in his lifetime, including paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and ceramics, more than any other artist in history, and he did it because he could not stop, because making art was as natural to him as breathing.

His personal life was complex, and it was often painful for the women who loved him. He was married twice, first to Olga Khokhlova, a Russian ballerina, and then to Jacqueline Roque, who was his wife at the time of his death, and he had many lovers, including Fernande Olivier, Marie-Therese Walter, Dora Maar, and Francoise Gilot, who was the mother of two of his children, Claude and Paloma, and who left him in 1953, one of the few women who left Picasso, rather than being left by him. His relationships were passionate, intense, and often destructive, and his paintings of the women in his life are among his most famous works, showing them as beautiful, as sad, as angry, and as powerful, in turn.

He died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, at the age of ninety-one, after a long and productive life, and he was buried in the grounds of his chateau at Vauvenargues, in the south of France. He left behind a huge body of work, a fortune, and a family that fought over his estate for years, and he left behind a reputation as the greatest artist of the twentieth century, a man who had changed art, and who had done it by refusing to stand still, by breaking the rules, and by finding new ways to see the world. His works are in museums all over the world, and they are still studied, still admired, and still argued about, because they are still alive.

Sculpture, Ceramics, and the Artist Who Could Not Stop Making

Picasso was not only a painter. He was also a sculptor, and he made sculptures from bronze, from wood, from metal, and from found objects, including a famous sculpture of a bull’s head, made from a bicycle seat and handlebars, which is a perfect example of his humour, and of his belief that art could be made from anything, even from junk. He also made ceramics in Vallauris, in the south of France, after the Second World War, where he discovered a pottery workshop, and where he began to make plates, vases, and figures in clay, decorating them with bulls, with faces, and with patterns, and producing thousands of pieces, which he gave away, sold, and kept, with the same energy he brought to painting. He was a man who could not stop making, and who made art from whatever was in front of him, whether it was a canvas, a piece of clay, or a bicycle.

He also made prints, including etchings, lithographs, and linocuts, and he was one of the great printmakers of the twentieth century, producing series like the Vollard Suite, a set of one hundred etchings made in the 1930s, which show his obsessions, his lovers, and his myths, in a style that is both classical and modern. He worked in print because it allowed him to experiment, to try new ideas quickly, and to reach a wider audience, and because he loved the process, the ink, the paper, and the press. His prints are now in museums all over the world, and they are studied as carefully as his paintings, because they show a different side of his genius, a side that is intimate, playful, and experimental.

The Women in His Life and the Portraits That Tell Their Stories

Picasso’s paintings of women are among his most famous works, and they are also the most controversial, because they show the women he loved, and the way he saw them, in a style that changed with each relationship. He painted Fernande Olivier, his first great love in Paris, in soft, tender colours, and he painted Olga Khokhlova, his first wife, in classical, elegant portraits, and he painted Marie-Therese Walter, a young woman he met when she was seventeen, in bright, sensual colours, with curved, voluptuous forms, and he painted Dora Maar, a photographer and an artist, in sharp, angular portraits, with tears, and with a face that is both beautiful and tormented. Each portrait is a record of a relationship, and of a moment in Picasso’s life, and together they tell the story of a man who loved intensely, and who painted what he loved, even when the love was painful.

Francoise Gilot, who was the mother of two of his children, and who left him in 1953, wrote a book about her life with Picasso, Life with Picasso, which is one of the most honest accounts of what it was like to love a genius, and to live with a man who was both brilliant and cruel. She said that he was a man who needed to possess the women he loved, and who could not bear to be left, and that his art was a way of possessing them, of keeping them on canvas, even after they had gone. Her book is a reminder that behind the great paintings are real women, with real lives, and real pain, and that Picasso’s genius came at a cost, not only to himself, but to the people who loved him.

My Take:

I think Pablo Picasso is the most important artist of the twentieth century, and I do not say that because he was famous, but because he changed the rules of art, and he changed them more than once. Most artists find a style and stay with it. Picasso found a style, abandoned it, found another, and abandoned that too, and he did it for seventy years. That takes a kind of courage that is rare, because it means giving up something that works, something that sells, and something that people love, in order to try something new that might fail. He was not afraid to fail, and that is why he succeeded so often. I admire that more than any single painting he made.

What I love most about his work is Cubism, because it is such a bold idea. Before Cubism, a painting showed the world from one point of view, as if you were looking through a window. Cubism said, no, the world is not like that. A face has two sides, a table has a top and a side, and a guitar is not only what you see from the front. Cubism tried to show all of those angles at once, in a single painting, and it did it by breaking things into cubes and triangles, and by putting them back together in a new way. It is difficult to understand at first, and it is not beautiful in the old sense, but it is true in a new sense, because it shows the world as we know it, not only as we see it. I think that is a profound idea, and it is one that changed not only painting, but the way we think about seeing itself.

I also think about Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and how shocking it must have been in 1907. Five nude women, with faces like masks, with bodies broken into sharp angles, staring out at the viewer, not as beautiful objects, but as powerful, frightening figures. It was not a pretty painting, and it was not meant to be. It was a challenge, a provocation, and a declaration that art would never be the same again. Picasso knew it was radical, and he did not exhibit it for years, because he knew the world was not ready. I admire that patience, and that confidence, because he trusted his own vision, even when his friends did not understand it, and he waited until the world caught up. That is the mark of a true revolutionary.

Guernica is the painting that moves me most, because it is not only a work of art, but a cry against war. It is black and white, it is huge, and it is full of suffering: a mother holding her dead child, a horse screaming, a soldier lying dead, and a bull watching. It does not show the bombing, it shows the pain, and that pain is universal. I have seen photographs of Guernica, and I have read about it, and I am always struck by how powerful it is, even in reproduction, and how it still speaks to us today, when wars are still killing civilians, and when the world still needs to be reminded of the cost of bombing. Picasso painted it in a few weeks, in a fury, and that fury is still in the painting, eighty years later. That is the power of art, and it is why Guernica matters.

I want to be honest about his personal life, because it was not admirable in the way his art was. He treated the women in his life badly, he was unfaithful, he was controlling, and he left a trail of broken hearts, and of women who suffered because they loved him. Dora Maar, Marie-Therese Walter, and Francoise Gilot all paid a price for loving Picasso, and Gilot, who left him, wrote a book about her life with him that is both loving and damning. I do not think we should excuse his behaviour because he was a genius. A genius can also be cruel, and Picasso was often cruel, especially to the women who loved him. I admire his art, but I do not admire the way he treated people, and I think it is important to say that plainly, because a full picture of a person includes the parts that are hard to admire.

I also think about his output, more than twenty thousand works, and I wonder how one man could make so much art in one lifetime. He painted every day, he drew every day, and he made sculptures, ceramics, and prints, as if he could not stop. That productivity is astonishing, and it is also a little frightening, because it suggests a man who was driven, who was restless, and who could not be still. I think that restlessness was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness: it made him invent Cubism, it made him paint Guernica, and it made him keep working into his nineties, but it also made him unable to rest, unable to be content, and unable to stay with one style, one woman, or one home for long. He was always moving, always searching, and always finding, and that is both inspiring and sad.

I also think about his sculptures, and about the bull’s head made from a bicycle seat and handlebars, because it is such a perfect example of his humour, and of his belief that art can be made from anything. He looked at a bicycle, he saw a bull, and he put the two together, and he made a sculpture that is both funny and beautiful, and that is now in a museum. That is a kind of seeing that is rare, and it is a kind of seeing that anyone can practise: look at an ordinary object, and ask what else it could be, and you might find a work of art. Picasso did that every day, with bicycles, with clay, with paper, and with paint, and that is why he made so much art, and why his art is so varied, and so alive.

I think about the women in his paintings, and about the portraits that tell their stories, and I feel a mixture of admiration and sadness. The portraits are beautiful, and they are powerful, and they show women as strong, as sensual, and as complex, in a way that few male painters had done before. But they also show a man who used the women he loved as subjects, and who painted them when he loved them, and who often painted them cruelly when the love ended. Dora Maar, with her tears, and Marie-Therese, with her curves, and Olga, with her classical beauty, are all portraits of real women, who suffered, and who loved, and who were hurt by Picasso. I think we should look at those portraits with both eyes open, admiring the art, and remembering the women, because they were not only subjects, they were people, and their stories matter too.

Another thought that stays with me is about his ceramics, and about the way he discovered pottery in Vallauris, in his sixties, and began to make plates and vases with the same energy he had brought to painting in his twenties. He was an old man, he was famous, and he was rich, and he could have stopped working, but he did not stop. He found a new medium, and he learned it, and he made thousands of pieces, because he loved to make things with his hands, and because he believed that art should be a part of everyday life, not only in museums, but on a table, in a kitchen, and in a home. That is a beautiful idea, and it is one that I think about when I look at a simple plate, and wonder if it could also be a work of art.

I also think about his output, and about the sheer number of works he made, more than twenty thousand, and I wonder what drove him to make so much. He was not making art for money, although he became rich, and he was not making art for fame, although he became famous. He was making art because he had to, because it was as natural to him as breathing, and because he could not imagine a day without drawing, painting, or sculpting. That is a kind of devotion that is rare, and it is a kind of devotion that I admire, even as I wonder if it also made him restless, and unable to be still, and unable to be content. He was always making, always searching, and always finding, and that is both inspiring and a little frightening, because it suggests a man who could never rest.

Finally, I want to say something about the way his work is still argued about today, because that is a sign of its importance. People still argue about whether Cubism is beautiful, whether Guernica is the greatest anti-war painting, and whether Picasso was a genius or a cruel man, or both, and those arguments are still alive, fifty years after his death, because his work is still alive, and still challenging, and still relevant. A work of art that no one argues about is a work that is dead. Picasso’s work is alive, and it will stay alive, as long as people look at it, and think about it, and argue about it, and that is the best tribute an artist can receive.

What I take from Picasso’s life, in the end, is a lesson about not being afraid to change. He changed his style, he changed his subjects, and he changed his life, again and again, and he did it because he believed that art should be alive, and that a living art must change. Most of us are afraid of change, because change is risky, and because the old way is safe. Picasso was not afraid, and he showed that change can be a source of strength, not of weakness. I try to remember that when I am stuck, when I am doing the same thing in the same way, and when I am afraid to try something new. Picasso tried something new, and he changed the world. That is a lesson worth remembering. I also think about the way Picasso’s work is taught in art schools today, and about how young artists are told to study Cubism, to break things apart, and to put them back together, and how that lesson is still radical, a hundred years after Les Demoiselles was painted. He taught artists that they do not have to copy the world, they can remake it, and that is a lesson that goes beyond painting, into sculpture, into design, and into any creative work. I think that is his greatest gift to artists: permission to break the rules, and to make something new, even when the world does not understand it yet.

I think about the last years of his life, in the south of France, when he was in his eighties and nineties, and still painting every day, with an energy that seemed to increase with age, and I wonder what kept him going. He had money, he had fame, and he had nothing left to prove, and yet he painted, because painting was his life, and because he could not imagine a day without it. That is a kind of devotion that is rare, and it is a kind of devotion that I admire, even as I wonder if it also made him unable to rest. He worked until the day he died, and that is a fitting end for a man who lived to make art. I also think about the young artists who visit the Picasso Museum in Paris, or in Barcelona, and who stand in front of Les Demoiselles, or Guernica, and who feel both inspired and intimidated, because Picasso set a standard that is hard to live up to. I would tell those young artists not to try to be Picasso, but to try to be themselves, with the same courage he had, to break the rules that need breaking, and to make the art that only they can make. Picasso did not copy anyone, and he did not want to be copied. He wanted to be free, and he wanted other artists to be free too, and that is the best lesson he can teach a young painter today. I also think about the way Picasso’s name is used as a shorthand for genius, and about how that can hide the hard work behind the genius. He did not wake up one morning and invent Cubism. He worked for years, he drew every day, he studied the old masters, and he experimented, and he failed, and he tried again, and that work is the real story, not the legend. I think young artists should remember that, and should not be discouraged when their work is not perfect, because Picasso’s work was not perfect either, and it was the trying, and the failing, and the trying again, that made him great.

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where was Pablo Picasso born?

Pablo Picasso was born on 25 October 1881 in Malaga, Spain, the first child of Jose Ruiz Blasco, an art teacher, and Maria Picasso Lopez. He was a child prodigy who could draw before he could write, and his father taught him to paint from a very young age.

What is the Blue Period in Picasso’s work?

The Blue Period, from 1901 to 1904, was a time when Picasso painted in shades of blue, with subjects that were poor, lonely, and sad, including beggars, blind men, and mothers with children. It was influenced by the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas and by Picasso’s own poverty in Paris.

What is Cubism and who invented it?

Cubism was invented by Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris from 1908 to 1914, and it broke objects into geometric shapes, showing them from many angles at once. A face could have two eyes on one side, and a table could be seen from above and from the side, in a single painting, changing the way artists thought about seeing.

What is Guernica about?

Guernica, painted in 1937, is Picasso’s response to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, when German and Italian bombers killed hundreds of civilians. The huge black-and-white painting shows the suffering of the bombing, including a screaming horse, a dead soldier, and a mother holding her dead child.

How many works did Picasso produce?

Picasso produced more than twenty thousand works in his lifetime, including paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and ceramics, more than any other artist in history. He worked every day, from his teens until his death at ninety-one, and he changed his style many times.

When did Pablo Picasso die?

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, at the age of ninety-one, after a long and productive life. He was buried in the grounds of his chateau at Vauvenargues in the south of France, and his works are in museums all over the world.