Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 - 8 April 1973)
What a mouth full! Thank Heaven he liked to be called Picasso (his mother's maiden name)! His father, Don Jose Ruiz y Blasco, was an artist and an art professor who taught his son from the age of 7 the skills of art. Picasso advanced so rapidly and was so talented that at the age of 13, Daddy quit painting, as he felt his son's talent far surpassed his own. Picasso was so precocious, his father sent him to the Royal Academy of San Fernando, in Madrid, when he was just 16, but he was not inclined to be disciplined in his endeavors, nor receive formal training with grace and soon grew bored and left the Academy.
Pablo went to Paris, met a journalist, and poet Max Jacob,, and shared a small apartment as Max taught him the language and the culture of Paris. He was so broke he burned many of his paintings to heat their apartment!
Picasso wandered between Barcelona and Paris thru the long war period (Spanish-American, Fist and Second World Wars), managing to remain uninvolved, although Hitler would not let him show his works in Paris during the Second World War, developing his art and multi women love life, and political standards.
He started his primitive era with his African cubism era, he was fascinated by the primitive masks and jewelry and other paraphernalia of early African artifacts to the current artistry of African tribes. He was fascinated with many of the artists of his day including El Greco with his elongated mesmerizing style of painting throughout his career, he moved between, realism, cubism, modernism, classicism, primitive and just plain Picassoism. He sketched, painted, sculpted, worked in bronze, did set design for stage and movies, and even designed a whole Russian ballet (he also married the lead ballerina). His talent and artistry were often debauched in his lifetime, because of his political views and his womanizing. It did not do his notoriety much favor when he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962, the midst of the Cold War.
Picasso was also involved in the Hollywood scene, designing, and appearing as himself in a few movies,
Paul McCartney wrote a song around Picasso's last words, spoken at the dinner table in his home as he was entertaining friends, he said to his wife," Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink any more ."
Picasso surrounded himself with the great artists of the time and the IN people of the times. Matisse was a lifelong friend, Gertrude Stein was an early benefactor, the anarchistFrancisco de Asís Soler published a short-lived magazine with Picasso as illustrator. Pablo sketched pictures of Igor Stravinsky , while designing the ballet, Pulcinella, for him..
Picasso had a prolific artistic life and influenced art for the millennium. He was married three times and had four children by diverse mates.
Review the varied sides of his artistry, like or dislike, he was a multi-faceted exceedingly talented, prolific, very Bohemian artist, a man for all seasons.
Petulant Paula
www.convictedartist.com
