Pablo Picasso

One of the most celebrated artists of the modern period, Pablo Picasso was born Pablo Blasco on October 25, 1881, in Malaga, Spain. Picasso’s father was a professor in the School of Arts and Crafts; and his mother, an artist. At age fourteen, Picasso began studying at the School of Fine Art under the tutelage of his father, and quickly honed his talent for painting. The following year, he was admitted as an advanced student to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, where he completed his entrance examination, which he was given a month to finish, in one day.

Picasso soon found the environment at the Royal Academy restrictive, and decided to return to the vibrant Barcelona and lived alternately in Paris, studying art at his own pace. In his early twenties, Picasso set up a studio in an old building in Paris, where he produced some of his most formidable works. Picasso also worked within several themes or periods such as his famous Blue Period, in which nearly all of his paintings depicted somber figures in blue. The color also reflected Picasso’s state of depression at this time, in which he occasionally burned his own drawings just to keep warm. Following the Blue Period, Picasso produced lighter work featuring more natural reddish/pink tones, dubbed his Rose Period.

Under the influence of Cézanne, Picasso ushered in what has been considered his most important contribution to twentieth century art: cubism, in which the faces of the figures are depicted from a frontal and profile perspective simultaneously. His works gradually became more and more abstract; for which he was often criticized by his contemporaries, and he also introduced letters and scraps of newspaper into his cubist paintings, giving rise to the new medium of cubist collage.

After World War II, Picasso came out publicly as a communist. He explained, "When I was a boy in Spain, I was very poor and aware of how poor people had to live. I learned that the communists were for the poor people. That was enough to know. So I became for the communists."

Picasso’s first wife was dancer Olga Khoklova, with whom he had one child, Paulo, who became a motorcycle racer and his father’s chauffeur. Picasso’s second wife was Jacqueline Roque, and he also had three other children from extra-marital affairs.

In 1973, ninety-two-year old Picasso passed away at his thirty-five-room hilltop villa in Mougins, France. He reportedly died while entertaining guests for dinner with his wife, issuing the last words, "Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink any more."

Following Picasso’s death, and under the suggestion of actor Dustin Hoffman, Paul McCartney wrote a tribute to the artist, called “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink To Me),” which was included on his album Band on the Run. In 1996 a film was also made about his life, Surviving Picasso, starring Anthony Hopkins in the lead role of Picasso.

Picasso’s paintings continue to be sold at auctions, fetching up to $104 million per piece.

YUDDY