Pablo Picasso facts for kids

Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
	Picasso in 1908
Born	25 October 1881; Málaga, Spain
Died	8 April 1973 (aged 91); Mougins, France

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 in Málaga, Spain – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter and sculptor. Pablo Picasso created over 20,000 images.

He is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is best known as the co-founder of cubism. A work of art is cubist when the artist opts to break up objects and re-assemble them in abstract and geometric form. Picasso could draw and paint when he was very young. His first word was lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil".

Perhaps his most famous painting is Guernica, which shows the horrors of war after the bombing of the town of Guernica.

He was 90 years old when a number of his works were shown in an exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. He was the first living artist to have an exhibition at the Louvre.

Picasso had four children with three women. He died of heart failure in Mougins, France, on 8 April 1973.

Childhood

Pablo Picasso with his sister Lola, 1889

Pablo Picasso was born as the son of the painter and teacher José Ruiz Blasco and his wife María Picasso López. His birthplace was Málaga in Spain. In his first years, until 1898, he used both, the name of his father and his mother to sign pictures. Since around 1901, he only used his mother's one. At the age of eight, Picasso created his first oil painting called "The Picador". In 1891, Pablo moved with his family to Northern Spain, where his father taught at the Instituto da Guarda. One year later, Pablo studied at this institute. Pablo's father was his teacher at this time. In 1896, he started to attend the art school in Barcelona after passing the entrance examination. One year later in 1897, Picasso started to study at the Academia San Fernando in Madrid. In 1898. he left the academy and went to a rest to Horta de Ebro. In 1900, he published his first illustrations in a newspaper in Barcelona. This exhibition had over 50 portraits.

Beginning of the Career

Picasso also made in 1900 his first travel to Paris. There, he lived with Max Jacob, a poet and journalist. When Max was working during the day, Pablo slept and when Max slept in the night, Pablo worked. Picasso had to burn his paintings to keep himself warm. Lovers in the Street and Moulin de la Galette are examples of his work in Paris. Both pictures were painted in 1900.

He went back to Madrid in 1901. There, he worked for a newspaper called Arte Joven. He was responsible for the illustration. He shortened his signature in this time to "Picasso" only rather than "Pablo Ruiz y Picasso". At the same time, his so called Blue Period started. Picasso made three trips to Paris. In 1904, he settled there. The Blue Period ended in 1904. The Soup and Crouching Woman are two examples of paintings from Picasso. Both were painted in 1903.

In 1905, Picasso made a trip to Holland. In the same year, Pablo's "Rosa Period" started. During this period, Picasso mostly painted circus motives. Girl Balancing on a Ball and The Actor are two paintings from this time. Both were painted in 1905 at the beginning of the Rosa Period. The end of the period is dated to 1907.

The next years in Picasso's life are called Cubism. The start of this period is dated to the year 1909 and ended around 1912. This period was inspired by the French painter Paul Cezanne. This period is called Cubism because he often painted cubes. During this time, Pablo Picasso preferred to paint musical instruments and still-life objects. He also painted his friends.

Picasso had his first exhibition in the United States in 1911. One year later in 1912, he had his first exhibition in Great Britain. Pablo's father died in May 1913.

During the First World War

From 1912 to 1919 was Picasso's so called Synthetic Cubism Period. During this time, he started to use collages in his paintings. His works from this time are called papiers collés. He has spent the his time during the First World War in Rome. In 1914, Picasso spent the whole summer in Avignon. In 1915, he started to paint realistic again. At the end of the same year, his wife Eva died. During the World War, he also worked as a designer for Sergey Diaghilev.

In 1917, Picasso met Olga Koklova, a Russian dancer. In the same year, he painted several realistic portraits of her and their friends. One year later, he married her. The last summer of the wartime, Picasso and his wife spent in Barcelona and Biarritz.

After the First World War

The painting "Guernica" by Pablo Picasso (1937) on a wall.

In 1921, Picasso's son Paul was born. Due to this occasion, he painted several paintings with his wife and his son on it. Paul was Picasso's only legitimate son. In 1925, he took part in the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris. Between 1924 and 1926, Picasso preferred to paint abstract still lifes. in 1927, he got known to Marie-Thérèse Walter. She became his model and mistress. In 1928, he started a new period. He began to make sculptural works. In 1931, he left his wife and moved with his mistress to Boisgeloup. There they lived in a country home. There, Picasso had a room for his sculptures only. Since 1932, he used Marie-Thérèse as model. During a travel in Spain, he started to use the bullfight as a new topic of his paintings. In 1935, Picasso's daughter, Maïa, was born. At this time, he got divorced from his wife because of the birth of Maïa. In 1936, Picasso got a job as director of the Prado-Museum in Madrid. During this time, the Spanish Civil War started. German bombs fall on Guernica in Spain on 26 April 1937. Picasso used this impact to paint one of his most famous paintings, Guernica. This painting was completed in about 2 months. It was first shown in the Spanish Pavilion in Paris in 1937.

During the Second World War

In 1938, Picasso's mother died. After the Second World War started on 1 September 1939, Picasso returned to Paris. Around 1943, he got known to the painter Françoise Gilot. She bore to him one son and one daughter. In 1941, he wrote his first play "Le désir attrapé par la queue" (English: Desire Caught by the Tail). It was first shown in 1944. Also in 1944, Picasso joined the communist Party. Picasso spent almost the full war time in Paris.

Images for kids

Pablo Picasso, 1901, Old Woman (Woman with Gloves), oil on cardboard, 67 × 52.1 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Pablo Picasso, 1901-02, Femme au café (Absinthe Drinker), oil on canvas, 73 × 54 cm, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Picasso in 1904. Photograph by Ricard Canals.
Pablo Picasso, 1905, Au Lapin Agile (At the Lapin Agile) (Arlequin tenant un verre), oil on canvas, 99.1 × 100.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Pablo Picasso, 1905, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), private collection, Rose Period
Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will".
Costume design by Pablo Picasso representing skyscrapers and boulevards, for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes performance of Parade at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris 18 May 1917
Pablo Picasso and scene painters sitting on the front cloth for Léonide Massine's ballet Parade, staged by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, 1917
Parade, 1917, curtain designed for the ballet Parade. The work is the largest of Picasso's paintings. Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France, May 2012.
Portrait d'Olga dans un fauteuil (Olga in an Armchair), 1918, Musée Picasso, Paris, France
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
Pablo Picasso, 1918, Pierrot, oil on canvas, 92.7 × 73 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Pablo Picasso photographed in 1953 by Paolo Monti during an exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan (Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC).
Stanisław Lorentz guides Pablo Picasso through the National Museum in Warsaw in Poland during exhibition Contemporary French Painters and Pablo Picasso's Ceramics, 1948. Picasso gave Warsaw's museum over a dozen of his ceramics, drawings and colour prints.
The Chicago Picasso, a 50-foot high public Cubist sculpture. Donated by Picasso to the people of Chicago
1909, Femme assise (Sitzende Frau), oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm, Staatliche Museen, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
1910, Woman with Mustard Pot (La Femme au pot de moutarde), oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Exhibited at the Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston 1913
1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas, 100.3 × 73.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1910, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler "What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?"
1910–11, Guitariste, La mandoliniste (Woman playing guitar or mandolin), oil on canvas
c.1911, Le Guitariste. Reproduced in Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du "Cubisme", 1912
1911, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, oil on canvas, 61.3 × 50.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1911, The Poet (Le poète), oil on linen, 131.2 × 89.5 cm (51 5/8 × 35 1/4 in), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
1911–12, Violon (Violin), oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm (oval), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. This painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921
1913, Bouteille, clarinet, violon, journal, verre, 55 × 45 cm. This painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921
1913, Femme assise dans un fauteuil (Eva), Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair, oil on canvas, 149.9 × 99.4 cm, Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art
1913–14, Head (Tête), cut and pasted coloured paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 × 33 cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
1913–14, L'Homme aux cartes (Card Player), oil on canvas, 108 × 89.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1914–15, Nature morte au compotier (Still Life with Compote and Glass), oil on canvas, 63.5 × 78.7 cm (25 × 31 in), Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
1916, L'anis del mono (Bottle of Anis del Mono), oil on canvas, 46 × 54.6 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Postage stamp, USSR, 1973. Picasso has been honoured on stamps worldwide.
Musée Picasso, Paris (Hotel Salé, 1659)
Museu Picasso is located in the gothic palaces of Montcada street in Barcelona
Art Museum Pablo Picasso Münster Arkaden