The Beginning: Childhood and Youth
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 to Don José Ruiz Blasco (1838-1939) and Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez (1855-1939). The family at the time resided in Málaga, Spain, where Don José, a painter himself, taught drawing at the local school of Fine Arts and Crafts. Pablo spent the first ten years of his life there. The family was far from rich, and when 2 other children were born -- Dolorès ("Lola") in 1884 and Concepción ("Conchita") in 1887 -- it was often difficult to make ends meet. When Don José was offered a better-paid job, he accepted it immediately, and the Picassos moved to the provincial capital of La Coruna, where they lived for the next four years. In 1892, Pablo entered the School of Fine Arts there, but it was mostly his father who taught him painting. By 1894 Pablo’s works were so well executed for a boy of his age that his father recognized Pablo’s amazing talent, and, handing Pablo his brush and palette, declared that he would never paint again.
In 1895 Don José got a professorship at “La Lonja”, the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and the family settled there. Pablo passed the entrance examination in an advanced course in classical art and still life at the same school. He was better than senior students doing their final exam projects. “Unlike in music, there are no child prodigies in painting. What people regard as premature genius is the genius of childhood. It gradually disappears as they get older. It is possible for such a child to become a real painter one day, perhaps even a great painter. But he would have to start right from the beginning. So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naivety. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.” -- Picasso.
In 1896 Pablo’s first large “academic’ oil painting, “The First Communion”, appeared in an exhibition in Barcelona. His second large oil painting, “Science and Charity” (1897) received honorable mention in the national exhibition of fine art in Madrid and was awarded a gold medal in a competition at Málaga. Pablo’s uncle sent him money for further study in Madrid, and the youth passed entrance examinations for advanced courses at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in the city. However, he would abandon the classes by that winter. His everyday visits to the Prado seemed much more important to him. At first, he copied the old masters, trying to imitate their style; later they would be the source of ideas for original paintings of his own, and he would re-arrange them again and again in different variations. Picasso’s time in Madrid, however, came to a sudden end. In summer 1898, catching scarlet fever, he came back to Barcelona, and then, to recover his health, he travelled to the mountain village of Horta de Ebro and spent long time there to return home only in spring 1899.
In Barcelona, he frequented Els Quatre Gats (Catalan for "The Four Cats"), a café, where artists and intellectuals used to meet. He made friends, among others, with the young painter Casagemas, and the poet Sabartés, who would later be his secretary and lifelong friend. In Quatre Gats Picasso met vivid representatives of Spanish modernism, including Rusinol and Nonell and he was very enthusiastic about new directions in art. This was the point when he said farewell to “classicism” and started his long-lasting search and experiments. His relations with his parents became strained, as they could not understand and forgive him his "betrayal of classicism".
In October 1900 Picasso and Casagemas left for Paris, the most significant artistic center of the time, and opened a studio in the Montmartre. The art dealer Pedro Manach offered Picasso his first contract: 150 francs per month in exchange for pictures. His first Paris picture was “Le Moulin de la Galette” (Guggenheim Museum, New York). In December, he departed for Barcelona, stopped in Málaga, and finally arrived in Madrid where he became co-editor of the magazine Arte Joven. However, by May 1901 he was back in Paris. This restlessnessa and constant travel from one corner of Europe to another continued throughout his life, and though he would slow his pace in his latter years, he never did finally settle down.
The Blue and Rose periods
In February 1901 Picasso’s friend Casagemas committed suicide: he shot himself in a Parisian café because a girl he loved had refused him. His death was a great shock to Picasso, and the painter would return to it again and again in his art: he painted the Death of Casagemas in color, the Death of Casagemas again in blue and then “Evocation – The Burial of Casagemas”. In this latter canvas the compositional and stylistic influence of El Greco’s “The Burial of Count Orgaz” can be traced. Picasso began to use blue and green almost exclusively. “I began to paint in blue, when I realized that Casademas had died” Picasso later wrote. Restless and lonely, the arist moved constantly between Paris and Barcelona, depicting isolation, unhappiness, despair, misery of physical weakness, old age, and poverty; all of it in shades of blue. In the allegorical La Vie (1903), in monochrome blue, the man has the face of his deceased friend.
In 1904 Picasso finally settled in Paris, at 13 Rue Ravignan, called “Bateau-Lavoir”. He met Fernande Olivier, a model, who would be his mistress for the next seven years. He even proposed to her, but she had to refuse because she was already married. They paid frequent visits to the Circus Médrano, whose bright pink tent at the foot of the Montmartre shone for miles and was quite close to his studio. There, Picasso got ideas for his pictures of circus actors. The pub Le Lapin Agile (The Agile Rabbit) was a meeting place of young artists and authors. In the pub, Picasso got acquainted with the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. The landlord, Frédé, accepted pictures as payment, and this made his café attractive for the artists and he acquired a splendid collection of paintings, including, of course, one by Picasso “At the Lapin Agile”, with Picasso as a harlequin and Frédé as a guitar player. The picture “Woman with a Crow” shows Frédé’s daughter.
By 1905, Picasso lightened his palette, relieving it with pink and rose, yellow-ochre and gray. His circus performers, harlequins and acrobats became more graceful, delicate and sensuous. In 1906 the art dealer Ambroise Vollard bought most of Picasso’s “Rose” pictures. This marked the beginning of Picasso's prosperity: he would never again experience financial worries. Accompanied by Fernande the painter traveled to Barcelona, then to Gosol in the north of Catalonia, where he painted “La Toilette”. Deeply impressed by the Iberian sculptures at the Louvre, he began to think over and experiment with geometrical forms.