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Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, famous for paintings like ‘Guernica’ and for the art movement known as Cubism.

(1881-1973)

Who Was Pablo Picasso?

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, on October 25, 1881. Picasso's mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez. His father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher.

His gargantuan full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.

A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him destined for greatness.

"When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope,'" he later recalled. "Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso."

Though he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious talent for drawing at a very young age. According to legend, his first words were "piz, piz," his childish attempt at saying "lápiz," the Spanish word for pencil.

Picasso's father began teaching him to draw and paint when he was a child, and by the time he was 13 years old, his skill level had surpassed his father's. Soon, Picasso lost all desire to do any schoolwork, choosing to spend the school days doodling in his notebook instead.

"For being a bad student, I was banished to the 'calaboose,' a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on," he later remembered. "I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I could have stayed there forever, drawing without stopping."

In 1895, when Picasso was 14 years old, his family moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he quickly applied to the city's prestigious School of Fine Arts. Although the school typically only accepted students several years his senior, Picasso's entrance exam was so extraordinary that he was granted an exception and admitted.

Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the School of Fine Arts' strict rules and formalities, and began skipping class so that he could roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed.

In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando. However, he again became frustrated with his school's singular focus on classical subjects and techniques.

During this time, he wrote to a friend: "They just go on and on about the same old stuff: Velázquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture." Once again, Picasso began skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars and prostitutes, among other things.

In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats ("The Four Cats").

Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break from the classical methods in which he had been trained, and began what would become a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

Picasso remains renowned for endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically different that his life's work seems to be the product of five or six great artists rather than just one.

Of his penchant for style diversity, Picasso insisted that his varied work was not indicative of radical shifts throughout his career, but, rather, of his dedication to objectively evaluating for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effect.

"Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should," he explained. "Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it."

Blue Period

Art critics and historians typically break Picasso's adult career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is called his "Blue Period," after the color that dominated nearly all of his paintings over these years.

At the turn of the 20th century, Picasso moved to Paris, France — the center of European art — to open his own studio. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend, Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish, almost exclusively in shades of blue and green.

'Blue Nude’ and ‘The Old Guitarist’

Picasso's most famous paintings from the Blue Period include "Blue Nude," "La Vie" and "The Old Guitarist," all three of which were completed in 1903.

In contemplation of Picasso and his Blue Period, writer and critic Charles Morice once asked, "Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?"

Rose Period: 'Gertrude Stein' and 'Two Nudes'

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome the depression that had previously debilitated him, and the artistic manifestation of Picasso's improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors—including beiges, pinks and reds—in what is known as his "Rose Period" (1904-06).

Not only was he madly in love with a beautiful model, Fernande Olivier, he was newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard. His most famous paintings from these years include "Family at Saltimbanques" (1905), "Gertrude Stein" (1905-06) and "Two Nudes" (1906).

Cubism was an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and his friend and fellow painter Georges Braque.

In Cubist paintings, objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting them from multiple, simultaneous viewpoints in order to create physics-defying, collage-like effects. At once destructive and creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world.

‘Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon’

In 1907, Picasso produced a painting that today is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."

A chilling depiction of five nude prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays, the work was unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before and would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century.

"It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire," Braque said, explaining that he was shocked when he first viewed Picasso's "Les Demoiselles." Braque quickly became intrigued with Cubism, seeing the new style as a revolutionary movement.

French writer and critic Max Jacob, a good friend of both Picasso and painter Juan Gris, called Cubism "the 'Harbinger Comet' of the new century," stating, "Cubism is ... a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end."

Picasso's early Cubist paintings, known as his "Analytic Cubist" works, include "Three Women" (1907), "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" (1909) and "Girl with Mandolin" (1910).

His later Cubist works are distinguished as "Synthetic Cubism" for moving even further away from artistic typicalities of the time, creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny, individual fragments. These paintings include "Still Life with Chair Caning" (1912), "Card Player" (1913-14) and "Three Musicians" (1921).

Classical Period: ‘Three Women at the Spring’

Picasso’s works between 1918 and 1927 are categorized as part of his "Classical Period," a brief return to Realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso's art.

He grew more somber and, once again, preoccupied with the depiction of reality. His most interesting and important works from this period include "Three Women at the Spring" (1921), "Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race" (1922) and "The Pipes of Pan" (1923).

From 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement known as Surrealism , the artistic manifestation of which was a product of his own Cubism.

Picasso's most well-known Surrealist painting, deemed one of the greatest paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War: "Guernica." After Nazi German bombers supporting Francisco Franco 's Nationalist forces carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso, outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, painted this work of art.

In black, white and grays, the painting is a Surrealist testament to the horrors of war, and features a minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. "Guernica" remains one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history.

Later Works: 'Self Portrait Facing Death'

In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso's later paintings display simple, childlike imagery and crude technique. Touching on the artistic validity of these later works, Picasso once remarked upon passing a group of school kids in his old age, "When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael , but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them."

In the aftermath of World War II , Picasso became more overtly political, joining the Communist Party. He was twice honored with the International Lenin Peace Prize, first in 1950 and again in 1961.

By this point in his life, he was also an international celebrity, the world's most famous living artist. While paparazzi chronicled his every move, however, few paid attention to his art during this time. Picasso continued to create art and maintain an ambitious schedule in his later years, superstitiously believing that work would keep him alive.

Picasso created the epitome of his later work, "Self Portrait Facing Death," using pencil and crayon, a year before his death. The autobiographical subject, drawn with crude technique, appears as something between a human and an ape, with a green face and pink hair. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of wisdom, fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a master at the height of his powers.

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A lifelong womanizer, Picasso had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes, marrying only twice.

He wed a ballerina named Olga Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years, parting ways in 1927. They had a son together, Paulo. In 1961, at the age of 79, he married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque.

While married to Khokhlova, he began a long-term relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter. They had a daughter, Maya, together. Walter committed suicide after Picasso died.

Between marriages, in 1935, Picasso met Dora Maar, a fellow artist, on the set of Jean Renoir's film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (released in 1936). The two soon embarked upon a partnership that was both romantic and professional.

Their relationship lasted more than a decade, during and after which time Maar struggled with depression; they parted ways in 1946, three years after Picasso began having an affair with a woman named Françoise Gilot, with whom he had two children, son Claude and daughter Paloma. They went separate ways in 1953. (Gilot would later marry scientist Jonas Salk , the inventor of the polio vaccine.)

Picasso fathered four children: Paulo (Paul), Maya, Claude and Paloma Picasso. His daughter Paloma - featured in several of her father's paintings - would become a famous designer, crafting jewelry and other items for Tiffany & Co.

Picasso died on April 8, 1973, at the age of 91, in Mougins, France. He died of heart failure, reportedly while he and his wife Jacqueline were entertaining friends for dinner.

Considered radical in his work, Picasso continues to garner reverence for his technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy. Together, these qualities have distinguished the "disquieting" Spaniard with the "piercing" eyes as a revolutionary artist.

For nearly 80 of his 91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that he superstitiously believed would keep him alive, contributing significantly to — and paralleling the entire development of — modern art in the 20th century.

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QUICK FACTS

• Name: Pablo Picasso
• Birth Year: 1881
• Birth date: October 25, 1881
• Birth City: Málaga
• Birth Country: Spain
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, famous for paintings like ‘Guernica’ and for the art movement known as Cubism.
• World War II
• Astrological Sign: Scorpio
• La Llotja (Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi)
• Royal Academy of San Fernando
• School of Fine Arts (Barcelona, Spain)
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that he superstitiously believed would keep him alive.
• Pablo Picasso's full name was: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.
• Death Year: 1973
• Death date: April 8, 1973
• Death City: Mougins
• Death Country: France

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Pablo Picasso Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/pablo-picasso
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: August 28, 2019
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should. Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.
• If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
• When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.
• Everything you can imagine is real.
• Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
• For being a bad student, I was banished to the 'calaboose,' a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I could have stayed there forever, drawing without stopping.
• When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as the pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
• Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?
• If you don't know what color to take, take black.
• Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
• God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.
• It's not what the artist does that counts. But what he is.
• Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of a bird?
• Of course, you can paint pictures by matching up different parts of them so that they go nicely together, but they'll lack any kind of drama.
• It has often been said that an artist should work for himself, for the love of art, and scorn success. It's a false idea. An artist needs success. Not only in order to live, but primarily so that he can realize his work.
• Nothing can be done without solitude.
• In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.
• I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.
• People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

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Summary of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was the most dominant and influential artist of the first half of the 20 th century. Associated most of all with pioneering Cubism , alongside Georges Braque , he also invented collage and made major contributions to Symbolism and Surrealism . He saw himself above all as a painter, yet his sculpture was greatly influential, and he also explored areas as diverse as printmaking and ceramics. Finally, he was a famously charismatic personality; his many relationships with women not only filtered into his art but also may have directed its course, and his behavior has come to embody that of the bohemian modern artist in the popular imagination.

Accomplishments

• It was a confluence of influences - from Paul Cézanne and Henri Rousseau , to archaic and tribal art - that encouraged Picasso to lend his figures more structure and ultimately set him on the path towards Cubism, in which he deconstructed the conventions of perspective that had dominated painting since the Renaissance. These innovations would have far-reaching consequences for practically all of modern art, revolutionizing attitudes to the depiction of form in space.
• Picasso's immersion in Cubism also eventually led him to the invention of collage, in which he abandoned the idea of the picture as a window on objects in the world, and began to conceive of it merely as an arrangement of signs that used different, sometimes metaphorical means, to refer to those objects. This too would prove hugely influential for decades to come.
• Picasso had an eclectic attitude to style, and although, at any one time, his work was usually characterized by a single dominant approach, he often moved interchangeably between different styles - sometimes even in the same artwork.
• His encounter with Surrealism, although never transforming his work entirely, encouraged not only the soft forms and tender eroticism of portraits of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter, but also the starkly angular imagery of Guernica (1937), the century's most famous anti-war painting.
• Picasso was always eager to place himself in history, and some of his greatest works, such as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), refer to a wealth of past precedents - even while overturning them. As he matured he became only more conscious of assuring his legacy, and his late work is characterized by a frank dialogue with Old Masters such as Ingres , Velazquez , Goya , and Rembrandt .

The Life of Pablo Picasso

"I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them." Said Picasso, and whether he was partnering with Braque on Cubism or spending time with the poets he admired, or the muses he loved and craved, he was finding new ways to see, and represent what he saw. His life is a virtual progression of modernism.

Important Art by Pablo Picasso

La Soupe is characteristic of the somber melancholy of Picasso's Blue Period, and it was produced at the same time as a series of other pictures devoted to themes of destitution, old age, and blindness. The picture conveys something of Picasso's concern with the miserable conditions he witnessed while coming of age in Spain, and it is no doubt influenced by the religious painting he grew up with, and perhaps specifically by El Greco. But the picture is also typical of the wider Symbolist movement of the period. In later years Picasso dismissed his Blue Period works as "nothing but sentiment"; critics have often agreed with him, even though many of these pictures are iconic, and of course, now unbelievably expensive.

Oil on canvas - The Art Institute of Chicago

Portrait of Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an author, close friend, and even supporter of Picasso, and was integral to his growth as an artist. This portrait, in which Stein is wearing her favorite brown velvet coat, was made just a year before Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , and marks an important stage in his evolving style. In contrast to the flat appearance of the figures and objects in some of the Blue and Rose period works, the forms in this portrait seem almost sculpted, and indeed they were influenced by the artist's discovery of archaic Iberian sculpture. One can almost sense Picasso's increased interest in depicting a human face as a series of flat planes. Stein claimed that she sat for the artist some ninety times, and although that may be an exaggeration, Picasso certainly wrestled long and hard with painting her head. After approaching it in various ways, abandoning each attempt, one day he painted it out altogether, declaring "I can't see you any longer when I look," and soon abandoned the picture. It was only some time later, and without the model in front of him, that he completed the head.

Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

This painting was shocking even to Picasso's closest artist friends both for its content and its execution. The subject matter of nude women was not in itself unusual, but the fact that Picasso painted the women as prostitutes in aggressively sexual postures was novel. Picasso's studies of Iberian and tribal art is most evident in the faces of three of the women, which are rendered as mask-like, suggesting that their sexuality is not just aggressive, but also primitive. Picasso also went further with his spatial experiments by abandoning the Renaissance illusion of three-dimensionality, instead presenting a radically flattened picture plane that is broken up into geometric shards, something Picasso borrowed in part from Paul Cézanne's brushwork. For instance, the leg of the woman on the left is painted as if seen from several points of view simultaneously; it is difficult to distinguish the leg from the negative space around it making it appear as if the two are both in the foreground. The painting was widely thought to be immoral when it was finally exhibited in public in 1916. Braque is one of the few artists who studied it intently in 1907, leading directly to his Cubist collaborations with Picasso. Because Les Demoiselles predicted some of the characteristics of Cubism, the work is considered proto or pre Cubism.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Still Life with Chair Caning

Still Life with Chair Caning is celebrated for being modern art's first collage. Picasso had affixed preexisting objects to his canvases before, but this picture marks the first time he did so with such playful and emphatic intent. The chair caning in the picture in fact comes from a piece of printed oilcloth - and not, as the title suggests, an actual piece of chair caning. But the rope around the canvas is very real, and serves to evoke the carved border of a café table. Furthermore, the viewer can imagine that the canvas is a glass table, and the chair caning is the actual seat of the chair that can be seen through the table. Hence the picture not only dramatically contrasts visual space as is typical of Picasso's experiments, it also confuses our sense of what it is that we are looking at.

Oil on canvas - The National Gallery, London

Maquette for Guitar

Picasso's experiments with collaged elements such as those in Still Life with Chair Caning encouraged him to reconsider traditional sculpture as well. Rather than a collage, however, Maquette for Guitar is an assemblage or three-dimensional collage. Picasso took pieces of cardboard, paper, string, and wire that he then folded, threaded, and glued together, making it the first sculpture assembled from disparate parts. The work is also innovative because it is not a solid material surrounded by a void, but instead fluidly integrates mass and its surrounding void. Picasso has translated the Cubist interest in multiple perspectives and geometric form into a three-dimensional medium, using non-traditional art materials that continue to challenge the distinction between high art and popular culture as he did in Ma Jolie (1911-12).

Paperboard, paper, thread, string, twine, and coated wire - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle

Picasso's Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle is typical of his Synthetic Cubism, in which he uses various means - painted dots, silhouettes, grains of sand - to allude to the depicted objects. This combination of painting and mixed media is an example of the way Picasso "synthesized" color and texture - synthesizing new wholes after mentally dissecting the objects at hand. During his Analytic Cubist phase Picasso had suppressed color, so as to concentrate more on the forms and volumes of the objects, and this rationale also no doubt guided his preference for still life throughout this phase. The life of the café certainly summed up modern Parisian life for the artists - it was where he spent a good deal of time talking with other artists - but the simple array of objects also ensured that questions of symbolism and allusion might be kept under control.

In this work, Picasso challenges the distinction between high art and popular culture, pushing his experiments in new directions. Building on the geometric forms of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , Picasso moves further towards abstraction by reducing color and by increasing the illusion of low-relief sculpture. Most significantly, however, Picasso included painted words on the canvas. The words, "ma jolie" on the surface not only flatten the space further, but they also liken the painting to a poster because they are painted in a font reminiscent of one used in advertising. This is the first time that an artist so blatantly uses elements of popular culture in a work of high art. Further linking the work to pop culture and to the everyday, "Ma Jolie" was also the name of a popular tune at the time as well as Picasso's nickname for his girlfriend.

The Three Musicians

Picasso painted two version of this picture. The slightly smaller version hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but both are unusually large for Picasso's Cubist period, and he may have chosen to work on this grand scale because they mark the conclusion of his Synthetic Cubism, which had occupied him for nearly a decade. He painted it in the same summer as the very different, classical painting Three Women at the Spring . Some have interpreted the pictures as nostalgic remembrances of the artist's early days: Picasso sits in the center - as ever the Harlequin - and his old friends Guillaume Apollinaire, who died in 1918, and Max Jacob, from whom he had become estranged, sit on either side. However, another argument links the pictures to Picasso's work for the Ballets Russes, and identifies the characters with more recent friends. Either way, the costumes of the figures certainly derive from traditions in Italian popular theatre.

Oil on canvas - The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Three Women at the Spring

Picasso made careful studies in preparation for this, his most ambitious treatment of what is an old classical subject. It makes reference to earlier pictures by Poussin and Ingres - titans of classical painting - but it also draws inspiration from Greek sculpture, and indeed the massive gravity of the figures is very sculptural. Critics have speculated that the subject appealed to him because of the recent birth of his first son, Paulo; the somber attitude of the figures may be explained by the contemporary preoccupation in France with mourning the dead of the First World War.

Large Nude in a Red Armchair

When Picasso's work came under the influence of the Surrealists in the late 1920s, his forms often took on melting, organic contours. This work was completed in May 1929, around the same time the Surrealists were preoccupied with the way in which ugly and disgusting imagery might provide a route into the unconscious. It was clearly intended to shock, and it may have been influenced by Salvador Dalí - and Joan Miro. It is thought that the picture represents the former dancer Olga Koklova, whose relationship with Picasso was failing around this time.

Oil on canvas - Musée National Picasso, Paris

This painting was Picasso's response to the bombing of the Basque town named Guernica on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Painted in one month - from May to June 1937 - it became the centerpiece of the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World's Fair later that year. While it was a sensation at the fair, it was consequently banned from exhibition in Spain until military dictator Francisco Franco fell from power in 1975. Much time has been spent trying to decode the symbolism of the picture, and some believe that the dying horse in the center of the painting alludes to the people of Spain. The minotaur may allude to bull fighting, a favorite national past-time in Spain, though it also had complex personal significance for the artist. Although Guernica is undoubtedly modern art's most famous response to war, critics have been divided on its success as a painting.

Oil on canvas - Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

Biography of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born into a creative family. His father was a painter, and he quickly showed signs of following the same path: his mother claimed that his first word was "piz," a shortened version of lapiz , or pencil, and his father was his first teacher. Picasso began formally studying art at the age of 11. Several paintings from his teenage years still exist, such as First Communion (1895), which is typical in its conventional, if accomplished, academic style. His father groomed the young prodigy to be a great artist by getting Picasso the best education the family could afford and visiting Madrid to see works by Spanish Old Masters. And when the family moved to Barcelona so his father could take up a new post, Picasso continued his art education.

Early Training

It was in Barcelona that Picasso first matured as a painter. He frequented the Els Quatre Gats, a café popular with bohemians, anarchists, and modernists. And he came to be familiar with Art Nouveau and Symbolism , and artists such as Edvard Munch and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec . It was here that he met Jaime Sabartes, who would go on to be his fiercely loyal secretary in later years. This was his introduction to a cultural avant-garde , in which young artists were encouraged to express themselves.

During the years from 1900 to 1904, Picasso traveled frequently, spending time in Madrid and Paris, in addition to spells in Barcelona. Although he began making sculpture during this time, critics characterize this time as his Blue Period, after the blue/grey palette that dominated his paintings. The mood of the work was also insistently melancholic. One might see the beginnings of this in the artist's sadness over the suicide of Carlos Casegemas, a friend he had met in Barcelona, though the subjects of much of the Blue Period work were drawn from the beggars and prostitutes he encountered in city streets. The Old Guitarist (1903) is a typical example of both the subject matter and the style of this phase.

In 1904, Picasso's palette began to brighten, and for a year or more he painted in a style that has been characterized as his Rose Period. He focused on performers and circus figures, switching his palette to various shades of more uplifting reds and pinks. And around 1906, soon after he had met artist Georges Braque , his palette darkened, his forms became heavier and more solid in aspect, and he began to find his way towards Cubism .

Mature Period

In the past critics dated the beginnings of Cubism to his early masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). Although that work is now seen as transitional (lacking the radical distortions of his later experiments), it was clearly crucial in his development since it was heavily influenced by African sculpture and ancient Iberian art. It is said to have inspired Braque to paint his own first series of Cubist paintings, and in subsequent years the two would mount one of the most remarkable collaborations in modern painting, sometimes eagerly learning from each other, at other times trying to outdo one another in their fast-paced and competitive race to innovate. They visited each other daily during their formulation of this radical technique, and Picasso described himself and Braque as "two mountaineers, roped together." In their shared vision, multiple perspectives on an object are depicted simultaneously by being fragmented and rearranged in splintered configurations. Form and space became the most crucial elements, and so both artists restricted their palettes to earth tones, in stark contrast with the bright colors used by the Fauves that had preceded them. Picasso would always have an artist or a group he collaborated with, but as Braque biographer Alex Danchev wrote: Picasso's "Braque period" was "the most concentrated and fruitful of his whole career."

Picasso rejected the label "Cubism," especially when critics began to differentiate between the two key approaches he was said to pursue - Analytic and Synthetic . He saw his body of work as a continuum. But it is beyond doubt that there was a change in his work around 1912. He became less concerned with representing the placement of objects in space than in using shapes and motifs as signs to playfully allude to their presence. He developed the technique of collage , and from Braque he learned the related method of papiers colles , which used cutout pieces of paper in addition to fragments of existing materials. This phase has since come to be known as the "Synthetic" phase of Cubism, due to its reliance on various allusions to an object in order to create the description of it. This approach opened up the possibilities of more decorative and playful compositions, and its versatility encouraged Picasso to continue to utilize it well in the 1920s.

But the artist's dawning interest in ballet also sent his work in new directions around 1916. This was in part prompted by meeting the poet, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau . Through him he met Sergei Diaghilev , and went on to produce numerous set designs for the Ballets Russes.

For some years Picasso had occasionally toyed with classical imagery, and he began to give this free rein in the early 1920s. His figures became heavier and more massive, and he often imagined them against backgrounds of a Mediterranean Golden Age. They have long been associated with the wider conservative trends of Europe's so-called rappel a l'ordre , (return to order), a period of art now known as Interwar Classicism .

His encounter with Surrealism in the mid 1920s again prompted a change of direction. His work became more expressive, and often violent or erotic. This phase in his work can also be correlated with the period in his personal life when his marriage to dancer Olga Khokhlova began to break down and he began a new relationship with Marie-Therese Walter. Indeed, critics have often noted how changes in style in Picasso's work often go hand in hand with changes in his romantic relationships; his partnership with Khokhlova spanned the years of his interest in dance and, later, his time with Jacqueline Roque is associated with his late phase in which he became preoccupied with his legacy alongside the Old Masters. Picasso frequently painted the women he was in love with, and, as a result, his tumultuous personal life is well represented on canvas. He was known to have kept many mistresses, most famously Eva Gouel, Dora Maar , and Françoise Gilot. He married twice, and had four children, Claude, Paloma, Maia, and Paulo.

In the late 1920s he began a collaboration with the sculptor Julio González . This was his most significant creative partnership since he had worked alongside Braque, and it culminated in welded metal sculptures, which were subsequently highly influential.

As the 1930s wore on, political concerns began to cloud Picasso's view, and these would continue to preoccupy him for some time. His disgust at the bombing of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War prompted him to create the painting Guernica , in 1937. During World War II he stayed in Paris, and the German authorities left him sufficiently unmolested to allow him to continue his work. However, the war did have a huge impact on Picasso, with his Paris painting collection confiscated by Nazis and some of his closest Jewish friends killed. Picasso made works commemorating them - sculptures employing hard, cold materials such as metal, and a particularly violent follow up to Guernica , entitled The Charnel House (1945). Following the war he was also closely involved with the Communist Party, and several major pictures from this period, such as War in Korea (1951), make that new allegiance clear.

Late Years and Death

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Picasso worked on his own versions of canonical masterpieces by artists such as Nicolas Poussin , Diego Velázquez , and El Greco . In the later years of his life, Picasso sought solace from his celebrity, marrying Jacqueline Rogue in 1961. His later paintings were heavily portrait-based and their palettes nearly garish in hue. Critics have generally considered them inferior to his earlier work, though in recent years they have been more enthusiastically received. He also created many ceramic and bronze sculptures during this later period. He died of a heart attack in the South of France in 1973.

The Legacy of Pablo Picasso

Picasso's influence was profound and far-reaching, and remarkably, many periods of his life were influential in their own right. His early Symbolist pieces remain iconic, while innovations in pioneering Cubism established a set of pictorial problems, devices, and approaches, which remained important well into the 1950s. Even after the war, even though the energy in avant-garde art shifted to New York, Picasso remained a titanic figure, and one who could never be ignored. Indeed, even though the Abstract Expressionists could be said to have superseded aspects of Cubism (even while being strongly influenced by him), The Museum of Modern Art in New York has been called "the house that Pablo built," because it has so widely exhibited the artist's work. MoMA's opening exhibition in 1930 included fifteen paintings by Picasso. He was also a part of Alfred Barr's highly influential survey shows Cubism and Abstract Art (1936) and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936-37). Although his influence undoubtedly waned in the 1960s, he had by that time become a pop icon, and the public's fascination with his life story continue to fuel interest in his work.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Pablo Picasso

• Pablo Picasso: Lives and Loves The Art Story Blog: The many women and muses of Picasso
• Picasso: Works Entering the Public Domain in 2019 Copyrights expire in the United States for a number of Picasso artworks
• Defining Modern Art Take a look at the big picture of modern art, and Picasso's role in it
• Timeline of Most Important Modern Art Picasso's 3 important works are a part of the overall history of Modern Art
• A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881-1906 By John Richardson
• A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916 By John Richardson
• A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 By John Richardson
• Picasso (Dover Fine Art, History of Art) By Gertrude Stein
• Life with Picasso Our Pick By Françoise Gilot
• Picasso & Lump: A Dachshund's Odyssey By David Douglas Duncan, Paloma Picasso Thevenet
• Picasso: 200 Masterpieces from 1898 to 1972 Our Pick By Pablo Picasso, Bernard Picasso, Bernice Rose
• Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973: Genius of the Century By Walther F. Ingo
• Picasso and the war years, 1937-1945 (1999) Guggenheim Exhibition Catalogue / By Steven A. Nash, Robert Rosenblum, Brigitte Baer
• Picasso and American Art By Michael FitzGerald, Julia May Boddewyn
• Picasso Line Drawings and Prints By Pablo Picasso
• Picasso Administration Official Website
• Picasso Museum Our Pick Museum in Madrid, Spain
• Page about the painting Guernica (1937)
• Page about the painting The Tragedy (1903) Analysis of painting beneath this painting. By National Gallery of Art
• The Artist Pablo Picasso By Robert Hughes / Time Magazine / June 8, 1998
• Artists on Picasso: Then and Now July 19, 2007
• Simon Schama's Power of Art series, on Picasso's Guernica
• Picasso: a documentary by Luciano Emmer
• Le Mystere Picasso: a documentary by Henri-Georges Clouzot
• Visit to Picasso: A Documentary by Paul Haesaert Our Pick
• Surviving Picasso (1996) Story of Picasso's lover Françoise Gilot
• Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies 2008 Documentary about the beginnings of Cubism
• David Bowie Music Video

Similar Art

Vision After the Sermon (Jacob's Fight with the Angel) (1888)

Table, Napkin, and Fruit (A Corner of the Table) (1895-1900)

The Woman with a Hat (1905)

Related artists.

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Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Pablo picasso (1881–1973).

Marble head from the figure of a woman

Woman in Green

Pablo Picasso

The Blind Man's Meal

At the Lapin Agile

Gertrude Stein

Bust of a Man

Woman in an Armchair

Standing Female Nude

Still Life with a Bottle of Rum

Man with a Hat and a Violin

Bottle and Wine Glass on a Table

Woman in White

Nude Standing by the Sea

Reading at a Table

The Dream and Lie of Franco II

Faun with Stars

Head of a Woman

James Voorhies Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

The artistic genius of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) has impacted the development of modern and contemporary art with unparalleled magnitude. His prolific output includes over 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, theater sets and costumes that convey myriad intellectual, political, social, and amorous messages. His creative styles transcend realism and abstraction, Cubism , Neoclassicism, Surrealism, and Expressionism. Born in Málaga, Spain, in 1881, Picasso studied art briefly in Madrid in 1897, then in Barcelona in 1899, where he became closely associated with a group of modernist poets, writers, and artists who gathered at the café Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats), including the Catalan Carlos Casagemas (1880–1901).

Living intermittently in Paris and Spain until 1904, his work during these years suggests feelings of desolation and darkness inspired in part by the suicide of his friend Casagemas. Picasso’s paintings from late 1901 to about the middle of 1904, referred to as his Blue Period, depict themes of poverty, loneliness, and despair. In The Blind Man’s Meal ( 50.188 ) from 1903, he uses a dismal range of blues to sensitively render a lonely figure encumbered by his condition as he holds a crust of bread in one hand and awkwardly grasps for a pitcher with the other. The elongated, corkscrew bodies of El Greco (1540/41–1614) inspire the man’s distorted features.

Picasso moved to Paris in 1904 and settled in the artist quarter Bateau-Lavoir, where he lived among bohemian poets and writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) and Max Jacob (1876–1944). In At the Lapin Agile ( 1992.391 ) from 1905, Picasso directed his attention toward more pleasant themes such as carnival performers, harlequins, and clowns. In this painting, he used his own image for the harlequin figure and abandoned the daunting blues in favor of vivid hues, red for example, to celebrate the lives of circus performers (categorically labeled his Rose Period). In Paris, he found dedicated patrons in American siblings Gertrude (1874–1946) and Leo (1872–1947) Stein, whose Saturday-evening salons in their home at 27, rue des Fleurus was an incubator for modern artistic and intellectual thought. At the Steins he met other artists living and working in the city—generally referred to as the School of Paris —such as Henri Matisse (1869–1954). Painted in 1905–6, Gertrude Stein ( 47.106 ) records Picasso’s new fascination with pre-Roman Iberian sculpture and African and Oceanic art. Concentrating on intuition rather than strict observation, and unsatisfied with the features of Stein’s face, Picasso reworked her image into a masklike manifestation stimulated by primitivism. The influence of African and Oceanic art is explicit in his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907; Museum of Modern Art, New York), a painting that signals the nascent stages of Cubism. Here the figure arrangement recalls Cézanne’s compositions of bathers, while stylistically it is influenced by primitivism, evident by the angular planes and well-defined contours that create an overall sculptural solidity in the figures.

The basic principles of Analytic Cubism (1910–12), with its fragmentation of three-dimensional forms on a two-dimensional picture plane, are embodied in Still Life with a Bottle of Rum ( 1999.363.63 ), painted in 1911. The techniques of Analytic Cubism were developed by Picasso and the French artist Georges Braque (1882–1963), who met in 1907. Picasso’s Bottle and Wine Glass on a Table ( 49.70.33 ) of 1912 is an early example of Synthetic Cubism (1912–14), a papier collé in which he pasted newsprint and colored paper onto canvas. Picasso and Braque also included tactile components such as cloth in their Synthetic Cubist works, and sometimes used trompe-l’oeil effects to create the illusion of real objects and textures, such as the grain of wood.

After World War I (1914–18), Picasso reverted to traditional styles, experimenting less with Cubism. In the early 1920s, he devised a unique variant of classicism using mythological images such as centaurs, minotaurs, nymphs, and fauns inspired by the classical world of Italy. Within this renewed expression, referred to as his Neoclassical Period, he created pictures dedicated to motherhood inspired by the birth of his son Paulo in 1921 (his first of four children by three women). Woman in White ( 53.140.4 ) of 1923 shows a woman clothed in a classic, toga-like, white dress resting calmly in a contemplative pose with tousled hair, eliciting a tender lyricism and calming spirit of maternity. Toward the end of the 1920s, Picasso drew on Surrealist imagery and techniques to make pictures of morphed and distorted figures. In Nude Standing by the Sea ( 1996.403.4 ) of 1929, Picasso’s figure recounts the classical pose of a standing nude with her arms upraised, but her body is swollen and monstrously rearranged.

By the early 1930s, Picasso had turned to harmonious colors and sinuous contours that evoke an overall biomorphic sensuality. He painted scenes of women with drooping heads and striking voluptuousness with a renewed sense of optimism and liberty, probably inspired by his affair with a young woman (one of Picasso’s numerous mistresses) named Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909–1977).  Reading at a Table ( 1996.403.1 ) from 1934 uses these expressive qualities of bold colors and gentle curves to portray Marie-Thérèse seated at an oversized table, emphasizing her youth and innocence.

Although still living in France in the 1930s, Picasso was deeply distraught over the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He reacted with a powerfully emotive series of pictures, such as  Dream and Lie of Franco ( 1986.1224.1[2] ), that culminated in the enormous mural Guernica (1937; Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid), painted in a grisaille palette of gray tones. This painting, Picasso’s contribution to the Spanish Pavilion in the 1937 Exposition Universelle in Paris, is a complex work of horrifying proportion with layers of antiwar symbolism protesting the fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

From the late 1940s through the ’60s, Picasso’s creative energy never waned. Living in the south of France, he continued to paint, make ceramics, and experiment with printmaking. His international fame increased with large exhibitions in London, Venice, and Paris, as well as retrospectives in Tokyo in 1951, and Lyon, Rome, Milan, and São Paulo in 1953. A retrospective in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957 garnered a massive amount of attention, with over 100,000 visitors during the first month. This exhibition solidified Picasso’s prominence as museums and private collectors in America, Europe, and Japan vied to acquire his works.

In Faun with Stars ( 1970.305 ) from 1955, Picasso returned to the mythological themes explored in early pictures. Again, incorporating life experience into his painting, he evoked his infatuation with a new love, a young woman named Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986), who became his second wife in 1961 when the artist was seventy-nine years old. Picasso symbolized himself as a faun, calmly and coolly gazing with mature confidence and wisdom at a nymph who blows her instrument to the stars. The picture embraces his spellbound love for Jacqueline.

Even into his eighties and nineties, Picasso produced an enormous number of works and reaped the financial benefits of his success, amassing a personal fortune and a superb collection of his own art, as well as work by other artists. He died in 1973, leaving an artistic legacy that continues to resonate today throughout the world.

Voorhies, James. “Pablo Picasso (1881–1973).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pica/hd_pica.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Karmel, Pepe. Picasso and the Invention of Cubism . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Léal, Brigitte, Christine Piot, and Marie-Laure Bernadac. The Ultimate Picasso . New York: Abrams, 2003.

Olivier, Fernande. Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier . Edited by Marilyn McCully. New York: Abrams, 2001.

Richardson, John. A Life of Picasso . 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1991–96.

Richardson, John, with the collaboration of Marilyn McCully. A Life of Picasso . 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1991.

Rose, Bernice B., and Bernard Ruiz Picasso, eds. Picasso: 200 Masterworks from 1898 to 1972 . Exhibition catalogue. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2002.

Rubin, William, ed. Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980.

Zervos, Christian. Pablo Picasso . 33 vols. (catalogue raisonné). Paris: Cahiers d'Art, 1932–78.

Additional Essays by James Voorhies

• Voorhies, James. “ Europe and the Age of Exploration .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment .” (October 2003)
• Voorhies, James. “ Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ School of Paris .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Naples .” (October 2003)
• Voorhies, James. “ Elizabethan England .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and His Circle .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Fontainebleau .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Post-Impressionism .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Domestic Art in Renaissance Italy .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Surrealism .” (October 2004)

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A LIFE OF PICASSO The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943 By John Richardson with the collaboration of Ross Finocchio and Delphine Huisinga

“Picasso” is a name that has come to mean “greatness.” Only “Einstein” rivals it as shorthand for “genius.” John Richardson’s three earlier volumes of “A Life of Picasso,” published between 1991 and 2007 and now followed by a fourth, rest on the unquestioned assumption that Picasso represents a pinnacle of artistic achievement. Richardson, who was not trained as an art historian, was a friend of Picasso, a fluent writer with a gift for narrative and a sensitive ability to read the artist’s work in relation to his life. “The Minotaur Years” ends before World War II is over. Picasso lived for three more decades, but this is the final volume. John Richardson died at 95 in 2019.

There is growing evidence in cognitive science that expectations, context-dependent prior beliefs, are crucial to perception. We are all biased by our past experiences, which shape what we see and how we evaluate it. The “great artist” is made through a complex consensus created over time among experts, institutions, media and the public against the larger background of cultural values and hierarchies.

Debates about whether artists’ lives can be separated from their art have taken on new urgency in a changing political climate. Picasso called his work “a diary.” In the introduction to the first volume, Richardson writes, “It must be painful, Picasso would say with more pride than guilt, for a woman to watch herself transformed into a monster, or fade from his work, while a new favorite materializes in all her glory.” Women, whom Picasso described as either “goddesses” or “doormats,” have become key to interpreting both his life and his work.

Throughout the biography, Richardson invariably refers to women by their first names and men by their last names, although the undeniably masculine Gertrude Stein is occasionally granted the dignity of her surname. Once out of short pants, Pablo becomes Picasso. The infantilizing gesture toward female figures, no doubt unconscious, is revealing. Although Richardson is frank about Picasso’s misogyny, his tone is breezy. In the third volume, the reader is alerted to the hideous images of the artist’s wife, Olga Khokhlova, in contrast to the sweet renderings of his young mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom Picasso literally picked up off the street when she was 17 and initiated into the mysteries of sadomasochistic sex games. “The anger in these images suggests that Picasso suffered from the atavistic misogyny … that supposedly lurks in the psyche of every full-blooded Andalusian male.” Relying on the work of the anthropologist David Gilmore, who researched woman hatred in Picasso’s birthplace, Richardson fails to acknowledge Gilmore’s thesis. In “Misogyny: The Male Malady,” he argues this hatred crosses cultures and rises from intense need for and fear of the maternal.

The decade covered in this volume, which turns on Picasso’s identification with the part-beast, part-man mythical Minotaur, is a tumultuous one, both in public and in private life. Picasso’s relations with the Surrealists; his antifascist politics and art in response to the war in Spain, and later to the Nazi occupation; his affair with the photographer, painter and intellectual Dora Maar, who collaborated with him on photo engravings, documented the making of “Guernica” (named after the Spanish city bombarded to ruins by the fascists in 1937) and replaced his wife as public consort, while Walter remained hidden away and gave birth to their child, Maya, are deftly presented as Richardson moves from the man to his circle to his art to larger historical events.

The book, however, is compromised by coy aggrandizement of the artist’s work and complicity with his behavior. Did Gertrude Stein, the biographer wonders, realize that Picasso’s “way with words was far more avant-garde than hers? The Spaniard’s writing had more in common with the Irishman James Joyce.” No evidence is given for this surprising opinion. “As the war dragged on, the images of Dora became ever more anguished. Picasso used her tears to stand for mankind’s.” Picasso’s treatment of Maar had also become ever more sadistic. Richardson reports on Lucian Freud’s visit to Picasso in the early ’50s with his wife, Lady Caroline Blackwood. Picasso insisted Blackwood accompany him up a narrow staircase to see Paris from the roof: “This interlude took longer than it should have. Freud was not pleased.” But Blackwood herself told this story. The 72-year-old artist lunged at her: “Picasso was just as old as the hills, an old letch, genius or no.”

Moral purity should not be a requirement for making art. Were this the case, most artists of all genders would have to exit the stage immediately. Picasso’s malignant narcissism, however, is in his art and an important ingredient of his celebrity. Although he was extraordinarily inventive stylistically and gobbled up the work of other artists, as well as myths, symbols and superstitions to brilliantly transform them, the emotional repertoire of the work, especially as he aged, is far narrower than often perceived. Picasso’s female imagery from this period, both idealized and cruel, is consistently stereotypic.

In a catalog essay for the exhibition “Women: Picasso, Beckmann, de Kooning” at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2012), I argued that Picasso’s “Weeping Woman” (1937) of Dora Maar, which purportedly evokes the horrors of war, turns grief into a ridiculous, feminine alien. After seeing Picasso’s work in 1932, Carl Jung wrote an article in which he distinguished between neurotic and schizophrenic images: “The picture leaves one cold, or disturbs one by its paradoxical, unfeeling and grotesque unconcern for the beholder. This is the group to which Picasso belongs.” Richardson addresses Jung in the third volume, but not this insight. In “Life With Picasso,” Françoise Gilot, who followed Maar as lover and muse, quotes the artist: “Nobody has any real importance for me. As far as I’m concerned, other people are like those little grains of dust floating in the sunlight. It takes only a push of the broom and out they go.”

Meaning is created between viewer and artwork. Those meanings are variable and depend on who is doing the looking and the expectations brought to the canvas, which include the cultural imprimatur of genius. Despite the decorous tone of Richardson’s narration and his scrupulous avoidance of his subject’s pathology, the man who emerges from these pages is so dependent on and frightened of women, he is incapable of a reciprocal relationship. He is also a rich man, whose sadistic impulses are fed and celebrated by fawning friends and an adoring public. Picasso’s hatred of women is not only an unfortunate reality of his life, it is central to his work and to his ongoing allure as preening priapic god. As a 2011 exhibition in San Francisco at the de Young Museum advertised itself: “Discover the women, the passion and the heartbreak behind Pablo Picasso’s work presented in ‘Picasso: Masterpieces From the Musée National Picasso, Paris.’”

There are both living wonders and shriveled miscarriages to be found in Picasso’s work, but the little Spaniard with a big chest and skinny legs has become far more than his work. He is a signifier for male genius that caters to a collective sickness, which revels in the denigration and punishment of women. It is this broader cultural myth, founded on context-dependent prior beliefs, that requires interrogation, not by censorship, but by discussion, a discussion that is absent from Richardson’s biography.

Siri Hustvedt is the author of a collection of essays, “Mothers, Fathers, and Others,” which will be published on Dec. 7.

A LIFE OF PICASSO The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943 By John Richardson with the collaboration of Ross Finocchio and Delphine Huisinga Illustrated. 308 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $40.

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Pablo Picasso

In the Studio

Modern art and st ives, prints and drawings rooms, artist biography, wikipedia entry.

School of Paris painter, sculptor , etcher , lithographer , ceramist and designer, who has had enormous influence on 20th century art and worked in an unprecedented variety of styles. Born at Malaga, Spain, son of an art teacher. His family moved to Barcelona, where he entered the School of Fine Arts 1895; then entered Madrid Academy 1897. Early showed great precocity. First visited Paris in autumn 1900, returned in 1901 when he had his first Paris one-man exhibition at the Galerie Vollard. Blue Period paintings of beggars and sad-faced women. Settled in Paris 1904. In 1905 painted some pictures of circus folk and embarked on his Rose Period. 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' 1906-7 marked the beginning of a more revolutionary manner, influenced by Cezanne and Negro art. Met Braque in 1907 and with his collaboration created Cubism . Designed sets and costumes for Parade and other Diaghilev ballets 1917-24. Made some neo-classic figure paintings 1920-4, parallel to later Cubism. Started to make more violently expressive and metamorphic works in 1925, and in the following years frequently exhibited with the Surrealists . Important series of wrought- iron constructions and modelled sculptures 1928-34, illustrations for Ovid's Les Métamorphoses , Buffon's Histoire Naturelle etc. Awarded First Prize at the 1930 Pittsburgh International. His painting 'Guernica' 1937 was inspired by the destruction by bombing of the Spanish town of that name. Continued to live in Paris throughout the Occupation. From 1946 lived mainly in the South of France at Antibes, Vallauris, Cannes, and from 1958 near Aix-en-Provence, where he maintained a prolific output of paintings, sculptures, etchings, lithographs and ceramics. Died at Mougins, near Cannes.

Published in: Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists , Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.591-2

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

Picasso's output, especially in his early career, is often periodized. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License . Spotted a problem? Let us know .

Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle

Bust of a woman, seated woman in a chemise, girl in a chemise, horse with a youth in blue, seated nude, artist as subject, thanx picasso, the defects of its qualities, picasso’s meninas, faun revealing a sleeping woman (jupiter and antiope, after rembrandt), head of a young boy, etching: 11, 28 february 1970 3, 16, 30 march 1970 (l.13), etching: 19 february 1970 (l.16), i could lend you something, but i would not be doing you any favours, film and audio.

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In the shop

Pablo Picasso

Oct 25, 1881 - apr 8, 1973, artist highlights, slideshow auto-selected from multiple collections, 6 artists who made cubism popular, when picasso put down his brushes and painted with light instead, if you like pablo picasso, you'll love rodolfo nieto, discover this artist, related works from the web, guernica (1937), www.wikidata.org guernica - wikidata, the old guitarist (1904), www.wikiart.org the old blind guitarist, 1903 - pablo picasso - wikiart.org, dove of peace (1949), en.wikipedia.org dove (picasso) - wikipedia, les demoiselles d’avignon (1907), www.wikiart.org the girls of avignon, 1907 - pablo picasso - wikiart.org, the weeping woman (1937), en.wikipedia.org the weeping woman - wikipedia, girl before a mirror (1932), www.wikiart.org girl in front of mirror, 1932 - pablo picasso - wikiart.org, girl on the ball (1905), www.wikiart.org girl on the ball, 1905 - pablo picasso - wikiart.org, le rêve (1932), en.wikipedia.org le rêve (picasso) - wikipedia, portrait of dora maar (1937), www.wikiart.org portrait of dora maar, 1937 - pablo picasso - wikiart.org, two girls reading, exchange.umma.umich.edu two girls reading (deux enfants lisant) - exchange, “why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing can one really explain this no. just as one can never learn how to paint.”, more artists, vincent van gogh, claude monet, 1,300 items, paul cézanne, paul gauguin, gustav klimt, more art movements, 21,319 items, 2,269 items, 1,142 items, 2,417 items, more mediums, 32,230 items, 54,587 items, 31,654 items, 41,521 items, 10,880 items, 105,401 items.

Pablo Picasso Biography

As a significant influence on 20th-century art, Pablo Picasso was an innovative artist who experimented and innovated during his 92-plus years on earth. He was not only a master painter but also a sculptor, printmaker, ceramics artist, etching artist and writer. His work matured from the naturalism of his childhood through Cubism, Surrealism and beyond, shaping the direction of modern and contemporary art through the decades. Picasso lived through two World Wars, sired four children, appeared in films and wrote poetry. He died in 1973.

Early Years: 1881-1900

Although he lived the majority of his adult years in France, Picasso was a Spaniard by birth. Hailing from the town of Málaga in Andalusia, Spain, he was the first-born of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. He was raised as a Catholic, but in his later life would declare himself an atheist.

Pablo Picasso's father was an artist in his own right, earning a living painting birds and other game animals. He also taught art classes and curated the local museum. Don José Ruiz y Blasco began schooling his son in drawing and oil painting when the boy was seven, and he found the young Pablo to be an apt pupil.

Picasso attended the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where his father taught, at 13 years of age. In 1897, Picasso began his studies at Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which was Spain's top art academy at the time. Picasso attended only briefly, preferring to roam the art exhibits at the Prado, studying paintings of Rembrandt , Johannes Vermeer , El Greco , Francisco Goya , and Diego Veláquez .

During this nascent period of Picasso's life, he painted portraits, such as his sister Lola's First Communion . As the 19th century drew to a close, elements of Symbolism and his own interpretation of Modernism began to be apparent in his stylized landscapes.

Middle Years: 1900-1940

In 1900, Picasso first went to Paris, the center of the European art scene. He shared lodgings with Max Jacob, a poet and journalist who took the artist under his wing. The two lived in abject poverty, sometimes reduced to burning the artist's paintings to stay warm.

Before long, Picasso relocated to Madrid and lived there for the first part of 1901. He partnered with his friend Francisco Asis Soler on a literary magazine called "Young Art," illustrating articles and creating cartoons sympathetic to the poor. By the time the first issue came out, the developing artist had begun to sign his artworks "Picasso," rather than his customary "Pablo Ruiz y Picasso."

Blue Period

The Picasso art period known as the Blue Period extended from 1901 to 1904. During this time, the artist painted primarily in shades of blue, with occasional touches of accent color. For example, the famous 1903 artwork, The Old Guitarist , features a guitar in warmer brown tones amid the blue hues. Picasso's Blue Period works are often perceived as somber due to their subdued tones.

Historians attribute Picasso's Blue Period largely to the artist's apparent depression following a friend's suicide. Some of the recurring subjects in the Blue Period are blindness, poverty and the female nude.

Rose Period

The Rose Period lasted from 1904 through 1906. Shades of pink and rose imbued Picasso's art with a warmer, less melancholy air than his Blue Period paintings. Harlequins, clowns and circus folk are among the recurring subjects in these artworks. He painted one of his best-selling works during the Rose Period, Boy with a Pipe . Elements of primitivism in the Rose Period paintings reflect experimentation with the Picasso art style.

African Influence

During his African art and Primitivism period from 1907 to 1909, Picasso created one of his best-known and most controversial artworks, Les Damoiselles d'Avignon . Inspired by the angular African art he viewed in an exhibit at the Palais de Trocadero and by an African mask owned by Henri Matisse , Picasso's art reflected these influences during this period. Ironically, Matisse was among the most vocal denouncers of "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" when Picasso first showed it to his inner circle.

Analytic Cubism

From 1907 to 1912, the artist worked with fellow painter Georges Braque in creating the beginnings of the Cubist movement in art. Their paintings utilize a palette of earth tones. The works depict deconstructed objects with complex geometric forms.

His romantic partner of seven years, Fernande Olivier, figured in many of the artist's Cubist works, including Head of a Woman, Fernande (1909). Historians believe she also appeared in "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Their relationship was tempestuous, and they separated for good in 1912.

Synthetic Cubism

This era of Picasso's life extended from 1912 to 1919. Picasso's works continued in the Cubist vein, but the artist introduced a new art form, collage, into some of his creations. He also incorporated the human form into many Cubist paintings, such as Girl with a Mandolin (1910) and Ma Jolie (1911-12). Although a number of artists he knew left Paris to fight in World War I, Picasso spent the war years in his studio.

He had already fallen in love with another woman by the time his relationship with Fernande Olivier ended. He and Eva Gouel, the subject of his 1911 painting, "Woman with a Guitar," were together until her untimely death from tuberculosis in 1915. Picasso then moved into a brief relationship with Gaby Depeyre Lespinesse that lasted only a year. In 1916-17, he briefly dated a 20-year-old actress, Paquerette, and Irene Lagut.

Soon thereafter, he met his first wife, Olga Khoklova, a ballet dancer from Russia, whom he married in 1918. They had a son together three years later. Although the artist and the ballerina became estranged soon thereafter, Picasso refused to grant Khoklova a divorce, since that meant he would have to give her half of his wealth. They remained married in name only until she died in 1955.

Neoclassicism and Surrealism

The Picasso art period extending from 1919 to 1929 featured a significant shift in style. In the wake of his first visit to Italy and the conclusion of World War I, the artist's paintings, such as the watercolor Peasants Sleeping (1919) reflected a restoration of order in art, and his neoclassical artworks offer a stark contrast to his Cubist paintings. However, as the French Surrealist Movement gained traction in the mid-1920s, Picasso began to reprise his penchant for Primitivism in such Surrealist-influenced paintings as Three Dancers (1925).

In 1927, the 46-year-old artist met Marie-Therese Walter, a 17-year-old girl from Spain. The two formed a relationship and Marie-Therese gave birth to Picasso's daughter Maya. They remained a couple until 1936, and she inspired the artist's "Vollard Suite," which consists of 100 neoclassical etchings completed in 1937. Picasso took up with artist and photographer Dora Maar in the late '30s.

During the 1930s, Picasso's works such as his well-known Guernica , a unique depiction of the Spanish Civil War, reflected the violence of war time. The menacing minotaur became a central symbol of his art, replacing the harlequin of his earlier years.

Later Years: 1940-1973

During World War II, Picasso remained in Paris under German occupation, enduring Gestapo harassment while he continued to create art. Some of the time, he wrote poetry, completing more than 300 works between 1939 and 1959. He also completed two plays, "Desire Caught by the Tail," and "The Four Little Girls."

After Paris was liberated in 1944, Picasso began a new relationship with the much younger art student Francoise Gilot. Together, they produced a son, Claude, in 1947, and a daughter, Paloma, in 1949. Their relationship was doomed like so many of Picasso's previous ones, however, due to his continual infidelities and abuse.

He focused on sculpture during this era, participating in an international exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1949. He subsequently created a commissioned sculpture known as the Chicago Picasso , which he donated to the U. S. city.

In 1961, at the age of 79, the artist married his second and last wife, 27-year-old Jacqueline Roque. She proved to be one of his career's greatest inspirations. Picasso produced more than 70 portraits of her during the final 17 years he was alive.

As his life neared its end, the artist experienced a flurry of creativity. The resulting artworks were a mixture of his previous styles and included colorful paintings and copper etchings. Art experts later recognized the beginnings of Neo-Expressionism in Picasso's final works.

Picasso's Influence on Art

As one of the greatest influences on the course of 20th-century art, Pablo Picasso often mixed various styles to create wholly new interpretations of what he saw. He was a driving force in the development of Cubism, and he elevated collage to the level of fine art.

With the courage and self-confidence unhindered by convention or fear of ostracism, Picasso followed his vision as it led him to fresh innovations in his craft. Similarly, his continual quest for passion in his many romantic liaisons throughout his life inspired him to create innumerable paintings, sculptures and etchings. Picasso is not just a man and his work. Picasso is always a legend, indeed almost a myth. In the public view he has long since been the personification of genius in modern art. Picasso is an idol, one of those rare creatures who act as crucibles in which the diverse and often chaotic phenomena of culture are focussed, who seem to body forth the artistic life of their age in one person.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

The old guitarist, girl before a mirror, three musicians, the weeping woman, the women of algiers, dora maar au chat, girl with mandolin, portrait of gertrude stein, family of saltimbanques, portrait of ambroise vollard, massacre in korea.

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Picasso Books

The ultimate collection of books on Pablo Picasso. Picasso was, arguably, the most emblematic artist of the twentieth century. He was the first living artist to have his work shown in the Louvre. And he had enormous influence on 20th century art, working in an unprecedented variety of styles as a  painter, sculptor, printmaker and lithographer, ceramist and designer. Born in Malaga, Spain, the son of an art teacher, he began his art studies when the family moved to Barcelona, where he studied first at the School of Fine Arts, then at the Madrid Academy from 1897. Precociously talented, he first visited Paris at the turn of the last century, and held his first one-man exhibition there in 1901. 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’ from 1906-7 was perhaps his pivotal painting, marking a revolutionary turn influenced by African tribal art, and which paved the way for the creation of Cubism, a collaboration with fellow artist George Braque. The rest, as they say, is history. His painting 'Guernica’ from 1937 is another landmark work, inspired by the destruction of the Spanish town by that name during the civil war. It stands to this day as one of the most forceful pictoral testimonies of that violent century.

Life with Picasso

By carlton lake & françoise gilot.

Picasso encourages us to consider seeing his art as a mirror of his incredibly prolific life. The Musée National Picasso in Paris alone contains 300 paintings and 300 sculptures out from a total of 5000 works donated to the French State. He produced close to 50,000 works throughout his life. In the Musée Picasso works are dated by the season or even by month, almost as though Picasso were creating a diary though his work. Contemporaries, patrons, peers and muses appear to us almost like biographical entries. And these personalities commend themselves to anyone seeking to understand his life. One particularly notable memoir is Francoise Gilot’s. It was a scandal and a sensation when first published in 1964 – Picasso and friends sued to prevent its publication. Of all Picasso’s wives and lovers, Gilot was the only one who left him. Her’s was a life lived on her own terms, and her book is a counterpoint to the machismo that pervades so much of Picasso’s life and work. ’There are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats’, he has said. This goddess got away.

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by Clement Oubrerie & Julie Birmant

Picasso’s  Head of a Woman  at Tate Modern, a raw portrait of his lover Fernande Olivier, seems infused with their passionate relationship. Here was another goddess and early inspiration. For the graphically inclined,  Pablo  – from SelfMadeHero’s brilliant Art Masters series – is a mammoth graphic novel which beautifully recounts Picasso’s early years as told by Olivier, who as a model shared his Montmartre garret in the years before Cubism.

A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 (Vol 3)

By john richardson.

From his earliest creative years, Picasso’s circle reads like a pantheon of 20th century artistic greats. Anecdotes from his life could fill entire book tomes, and indeed, John Richardson’s magisterial biography runs to four volumes, and ends with World War II (Picasso died in 1973.) “As I get older and older, I get more and more astonished the deeper I get into his work,” Richardson said of his friend in 2012. His is the definitive biography, and although volume four is still pending publication, the place to start if you have the time and the inclination.

Gertrude Stein on Picasso

By gertrude stein.

Aside from artists, Picasso rubbed shoulders with many other 20th century luminaries, who were drawn into his entourage by his charisma and wit. One of his greatest admirers was the American Gertrude Stein, who was a collector of his work from the early days of his career. Picasso’s portrait of her from 1905 demanded no fewer than 90 sittings (though one imagines they enjoyed shooting the breeze). When he gave it to Stein as a gift, she told him that it didn’t look like her. “It will”, he said. Stein’s account of Picasso provides a very good foil to this larger-than-life personality.

The Success and Failure of Picasso

By john berger.

“Picasso’s such a varied and impossible to pin down character. What can be produced in the process of trying to get there is the interesting thing.”

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A Day with Picasso

By billy klüver.

“We knew very little about these photographs – the circumstances, how many there were, who took them, you name it – until Billy Klüver set for himself this project of trying to figure it all out. He did a forensic investigation of the photographs and discovered that they were taken by Jean Cocteau of his friends Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani et cetera. It’s a true detective story about photography.” Read more...

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Errol Morris , Film Director

Languages of Art

By nelson goodman.

“Somebody complained that Picasso’s picture of Gertrude Stein did not look like her and Goodman’s response was, ‘It will.'” Read more...

The best books on The Philosophy of Art

Noël Carroll , Philosopher

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Pablo Picasso

Arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso is known as the founder of Cubism. He was born in Málaga in 1881 to an artist father. The family moved to Barcelona in 1895, where Picasso enrolled at the School of Fine Arts.

In the beginning of 1901, Picasso moved to Paris for the first time. The city was considered the cultural capital of Europe and attracted many aspiring artists. Soon after, he made his first sale with art dealer Berthe Weill and quickly became an influential figure in the artistic circles of Montmartre. After working in his characteristic Blue Period of 1901‒4 (as seen in Motherhood (1901)), Picasso developed his famous Cubist style in 1906/7. Together with French artist Georges Braque, Picasso extended the technique to Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism (as seen in Fruit Dish, Bottle and Violin (1914)).

Picasso was extremely productive during his lifetime, expanding his oeuvre to include etching, sculpture and ceramics. The Spanish artist had a profound influence on the formation of 20th-century Avant-garde art and his works can be found in many notable modern art collections around the world.

Paintings by Pablo Picasso

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

The last volume in ‘A Life of Picasso’ is just as astounding as its predecessors

The volume, subtitled ‘The Minotaur Years,’ unfolds against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War

John Richardson, who died in 2019 , set the standard for modern artists’ biographies (and we are living through a golden age of the genre) with the first three volumes of his Pablo Picasso biography. The first volume was published in 1991.

The fourth and final volume, covering the 10 years after Adolf Hitler came to power and ceasing, unfortunately, three full decades before Picasso’s death in 1973, is a worthy follow-up to its predecessors. Completed in difficult circumstances — Richardson was in his 90s and going blind — it is only about half their length. But it is just as rich, just as astounding.

Great Works, In Focus

The volume, subtitled “ The Minotaur Years ,” unfolds against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. It covers Picasso’s complicated relations with the Surrealists; his engagement with the irrational side of Greek mythology; his fraught relationship with his native Spain; a period when he decided to stop painting and focus on writing poetry; the creation of his masterpiece “Guernica”; and his experiences during the Nazi occupation of Paris.

Picasso was deeply involved in the formation of the myth that surrounds him, which presents a problem for would-be biographers. The myth was of unbridled invention, of creative fecundity almost as an end in itself. And it was successful self-marketing: The name “Picasso” has become a byword for audacious invention.

Of course, if you have seen a lot of Picassos, you know that not everything he made was of great interest. And yet those who seek to dismiss the prolific Spaniard as some sort of unstoppable gusher or helpless savant are responding to a caricature. Picasso made masterpieces galore. He was not only absurdly gifted; he was terrifyingly intelligent.

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And he was also, of course, immensely manipulative. Despite his charm and the long line of smart and formidable women who fell in love with him, he was also — as Richardson makes clear — an emotional monster, whose urge to humiliate was constantly manifesting itself in his art.

What biographer would contemplate taking on such a complicated subject? You would need to be the perfect person for the job — to have just the right combination of masochism, tenacity, disinterest and dauntlessness.

Richardson was the perfect person — a marvelous, no-nonsense prose stylist with a gift for bold character sketches, a fierce dedication to concrete facts, deep curiosity about images and a command of irony. The most entertaining and well-connected of men, Richardson had befriended Picasso in the 1950s. At the time, Richardson was in a relationship with the collector and art historian Douglas Cooper (described in Richardson’s marvelous memoir, “ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ”). After he and Cooper broke up, he maintained good relations not only with Picasso but also with his heirs and ex-lovers.

The first three volumes, published at increasingly lengthy intervals, were written with a collaborator, Marilyn McCully. This fourth volume was made possible by Delphine Huisinga and Ross Finocchio, who did much of the research, allowing Richardson to concentrate on the writing. According to Richardson’s friend David Dawson, Finocchio “sat with [Richardson] every morning rereading his writing back to him as John’s eyesight was failing,” while Huisinga would work in the library checking historical notes Richardson had made, in many cases, decades earlier.

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In 1933, when the book starts, Picasso’s private life was engulfed in a melodrama of his own making. At the same time, different factions of the Surrealists were fighting over him in ways that mirrored his love life. It feels like pop psychology to say so, but on some level, he seemed to need to be fought over. Part of him clearly welcomed the chaos.

Richardson has consistently emphasized Picasso’s relationships with women as a key to understanding his art. So here we learn about the bitter and protracted end of his marriage to the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, his affair with photographer and painter Dora Maar, his ongoing relationship with model Marie-Thérèse Walter and his first meeting with painter Françoise Gilot.

Given the psychosexual complexity he cultivated, it’s little surprise that Picasso identified with the Minotaur — part bull, part man — who did battle in Greek mythology with Theseus in King Minos’s Cretan labyrinth. Some of his greatest works from this decade — from “Blind Minotaur Guided by a Young Girl at Night,” the most famous of his Vollard Suite prints, through to “Guernica” — draw on the Minotaur, or on bulls and bullfighting, always with some degree of identification.

The blind Minotaur, in particular, haunted Picasso. “For a superstitious artist whose creativity derived in part from the mirada fuerte (strong gaze), prized by Andalusians as a source of sexual power, blindness represented a vital loss,” Richardson wrote. “The equation of vision, sexuality, and art making is the key that often unlocks the meaning of Picasso’s work.”

Cubism, which Picasso invented together with Georges Braque, had made an asset of concealment and ambiguity, firmly establishing an idea that, for better or worse, prevailed over the rest of Picasso’s career: that his paintings are there to be “solved.” (Tellingly, the same assumption never applies to Matisse.)

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When it suited him, Picasso freely handed out interpretive “keys” to his own work. He once turned to Richardson, as the two sat in the crowd at a bullfight in Nimes, in southern France, and said: “Those horses” — he meant the horses the tormented bulls were trying to disembowel — “are the women in my life.” (According to Richardson, Picasso’s then wife, Jacqueline Roque, overheard the comment and winced.)

“One has to commit a painting in the same way one commits a crime,” said Edgar Degas, an artist Picasso revered. So it seems fitting that Richardson has approached Picasso’s oeuvre in the spirit of a detective. The life, in a sense, is the crime scene. His speculations can be thrilling. There are many Eureka moments, often relating to the ongoing significance of the death of Picasso’s sister Conchita. But he never claims his interpretations are definitive.

Of a charcoal drawing made at the end of 1933, Richardson suggests that the Surrealist figure’s “disembodied eyeballs” may be related to a horrific crime committed that year. Two sisters, Christine and Léa Papin, who worked as maids, had murdered the mistress of the house and her daughter. They gouged out their victims’ eyes and slashed the mother’s “thighs and buttocks in the same way she would score a rabbit for roasting.” During the trial, Christine Papin had violent fits and tried to pluck out her own eyes.

The trial caused a sensation in the French press. Marxists wrote about the class implications of the crime, while the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, in an essay published in “Minotaure” (a Surrealist publication to which Picasso had also contributed) attributed the sisters’ “orgie sanglante” (bloody orgy) to psychosis. Picasso discussed the crime with Lacan. But he was not convinced that the sisters were insane. His objection was philosophical. “Today’s psychiatrists are the enemies of tragedy, and of saintliness,” he said. “Saying that the Papin sisters are mad means getting rid of that admirable thing called sin.”

In interesting ways, Picasso’s stance here reflects back on Richardson’s project. A brilliant detective, Richardson is continually solving “crimes” (read “artworks”) by tracing them back to Picasso’s lovers and his dead sister. It’s mostly convincing, but it starts to feel reductive.

Just as Picasso saw psychiatrists as the enemies of a deeper vision of life and death, biographers may be the enemies of a deeper conception of art. If everything is explained in biographical terms, you may lose “that admirable thing” called ambiguity.

Richardson’s big thesis is that Picasso saw art in terms of magic, especially of exorcism and sacrifice. I think he is basically right. What is hard to swallow is the repetitiveness of Richardson’s idea of Picasso’s particular brand of “magic,” which so often sprouts from his feelings about the women in his life.

The fault, perhaps, is not Richardson’s. You expect a biographer to emphasize biographical readings. But it’s a caution that we might apply more generally. What we know about an artist’s life shouldn’t be recruited to secure us against what is wild and unknown in his or her art. Art — and modern art in particular — can be puzzling, but that doesn’t mean we have to solve it. The will to “solve” or even “understand” art is not the only — and not the best — form of attention we can pay it.

Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at The Washington Post.

A Life of Picasso

The Minotaur Years 1933-1943

By John Richardson

Knopf. 320 pp. $40

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Pablo Picasso – The Life and Works of This Famous Cubism Artist

Pablo Picasso is perhaps the most influential figure in the history of 20th-century art. The varied range of Pablo Picasso’s artworks were not the result of drastic transformations in his style over his career but were instead based on his commitment to objectively evaluate the form and method best suited to accomplish his desired impact for each art piece. Picasso’s artworks were unquestionably destined to be interwoven into the tapestry of mankind as some of the finest artworks of all time.

Table of Contents

• 1 The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso
• 2.1 Early Life
• 2.2 Early Training
• 2.3 Mature Period
• 2.4 Late Years and Death
• 3.1 The Blue Period (1901-1904)
• 3.2 The Rose Period (1904-1906)
• 3.3 African Influences (1907-1909)
• 3.4 Cubism (1909-1912)
• 3.5 Neoclassicism (late 1910s-early 1920s) and Surrealism (mid-1920s)
• 4.1 The Soup (1903)
• 4.2 Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1905)
• 4.3 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
• 4.4 Still Life with Chair Caning (1912)
• 4.5 Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle (1914)
• 4.6 Ma Jolie (1912)
• 4.7 The Three Musicians (1921)
• 4.8 Three Women at the Spring (1921)
• 4.9 Guernica (1937)
• 5.1 Life with Picasso (2019) by Francois Gilot
• 5.2 Picasso: Painting the Blue Period (2021) by Kenneth Brummel
• 6.1 When Was Picasso Born and When Did Picasso Die?
• 6.2 Who Was Pablo Picasso?

The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso

Before reaching the age of 50, this famous artist had established himself as the most renowned figure in contemporary art , with the most distinctive aesthetic and sense for artistic production. Before Picasso, no other creator had made such an influence on the art community or had such a significant reputation among admirers as well as critics.

During his lengthy career, Picasso’s drawings, paintings, and sculptures amounted to around 20,000 pieces, including other objects such as costuming and theatrical sets.

He is globally considered to be one of the 20th century’s most important and acclaimed painters . As an artistic pioneer, he is credited with being a founding member of the Cubist movement with Georges Braque. Cubism was a cultural movement that forever altered the landscape of European sculpture and painting, as well as architectural styles, music, and writing.

Cubist themes and artifacts are disassembled and reassembled in an abstract fashion.

When Picasso and Braque were creating the groundwork for Cubism in France between 1910 and 1920, its influence was so far-reaching that it inspired offshoots such as Dada, Futurism , and Constructivism in other nations. Picasso is also recognized for the invention of built sculpture and the co-invention of the collage art form. He is also considered among three 20th-century painters who are acknowledged for developing the principles of Plastic arts.

By actively manipulating substances that had not before been cut or sculpted, this innovative art form drove civilization toward social improvements in paintings, sculpting, printing, and pottery. These substances were not simply plastic; they could be shaped in some fashion, generally in three dimensions. Plaster, metals, and wood were employed by artists to produce groundbreaking sculptural artworks that the public had never experienced before.

But when was Picasso born and when did Picasso die? Let us first take a look at Pablo Picasso’s biography before we go any further into his style and examples of famous Picasso paintings .

Pablo Picasso’s Biography

Picasso’s propensity to create works in a wide range of genres earned him a high level of recognition throughout his lifetime. His importance as an artist and an influence on other painters has only risen since his death in 1973. To understand how he rose to fame, let us take a look at his childhood, education, and art periods .

Picasso was born to Don and Maria Picasso in Malaga, Spain. His father, an artist and art instructor, was awestruck by the young boy’s painting talent from a very early age. Picasso began academic training from his father at the age of seven.

Ruiz felt that instruction consisted of reproducing masterpieces and sketching the human figure from live subjects as well as plaster casts due to his conventional academic schooling.

When Picasso was ten years of age, his family relocated to A Coruna, where the School of Fine Arts employed his father as a lecturer. They stayed for four years, during which time Ruiz thought his son had overtaken him as a painter at the age of 13 and resolved to stop painting. Though Ruiz’s still created paintings for many years to follow, he was undoubtedly awed by his son’s inherent talent and skill. Pablo Picasso’s family was shocked when his little sister passed away in 1895 from diphtheria.

Early Training

They relocate to Barcelona, where Pablo Picasso’s father started working at the School of Fine Arts. He convinced administrators to allow his son to take an admission test for an expert class, and Picasso was enrolled at the age of 13 years old. When he was 16 years of age, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Spain’s most prestigious art school. Picasso despised the formal lessons and dropped out of his lessons soon after arriving. He spent his days within Madrid’s Prado, which had works by El Greco and Goya.

Picasso’s corpus of work is extensive and extends from his early childhood years until his death, offering a more thorough record of his progress than possibly any other artist.

Studying the archives of his initial studies, there is reported to be a transition when the childlike aspect of his drawings faded, indicating the formal start of his profession. That year is claimed to be 1894 when young Pablo Picasso Would have been just 13 years of age. He produced the Portrait of Aunt Pepa at the age of 14, a remarkable picture that has been considered to be one of the greatest portraits in the history of Spain. Picasso also produced his award-winning Science and Charity at the age of 16. His realism method, which had been instilled in him by his father and early education, expanded with his exposure to symbolist ideas.

This inspired Picasso to create his own interpretation of modernity and to undertake his first journey to Paris.

Picasso learned French from a Parisian acquaintance, poet Max Jacob. They lived in an apartment where they learned what it was like to be a “struggling artist.” They were chilly and poor, and they had to burn their own works to keep the flat warm. Despite the fact that he started developing sculpture throughout this phase, critics refer to it as his Blue Period, named after the blue color palette that characterized his canvases.

The work’s tone was likewise unmistakably melancholy.

The artist’s anguish at the suicide of Carlos Casegemas, a friend he met in Barcelona, may be seen as the origins of this, while the themes of most of the Blue Period works were derived from the homeless and hookers he met on city streets . The Old Guitarist (1903) is an excellent illustration of this period’s subject material and aesthetic. Pablo Picasso’s colors started to lighten in 1904, and he worked in a manner known as his Rose Period for a year or longer. He concentrated on entertainers and circus people, changing his palette to more cheerful pinks and reds.

And, shortly after meeting artist Georges Braque in 1906, his palette deepened, his figures got denser and more concrete in appearance, and he started to move towards Cubism.

Mature Period

Previously, commentators traced the origins of Cubism to his early work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Although that piece is today regarded as intermediate (it lacks the dramatic aberrations of his later efforts), it was definitely pivotal in his growth due to its heavy influence from African sculptures and old Iberian artwork.

It is said to have motivated Braque to create his own first series of artworks, and in the years that followed, the two would embark on one of the most extraordinary collaborative efforts in contemporary art, occasionally excitedly learning from one another, occasionally attempting to surpass one another in their fast-paced and aggressive contest to advance.

During the development of this radical approach, Braque and Picasso met on a regular basis, and Picasso characterized himself and Braque as “two climbers bound together.” Multiple viewpoints on an item are shown concurrently in their common vision by being split and reorganized in splintered forms. Form and space were the most important aspects, and as a result, both painters limited their palettes to neutral tones, in stark contradiction to the brilliant colors employed by the Fauves before them.

Picasso would always cooperate with an individual or a collective, but as Braque historian Alex Danchev put it, Picasso’s “Braque phase” was “the most intense and productive of his entire career.”

Picasso hated the title “Cubism”, particularly as critics began to distinguish between the two main methods he was claimed to follow – Synthetic and Analytical. He considered his oeuvre as a whole. However, there is little question that his work changed after 1912. He became less preoccupied with depicting the arrangement of items in space and more interested in employing forms and motifs as cues to hint at their existence in a whimsical manner.

He invented the collage method, and from Braque, he learned the related papiers colles method, which included cutout sheets of paper in combination with parts of preexisting source materials. Due to its dependence on different references to an item in order to build the description of it, this phase has later come to be regarded as the “Synthetic” phase of Cubism.

Picasso used this approach to produce more decorative and humorous arrangements, and its versatility inspired him to continue using it far into the 1920s.

However, the artist’s growing interest in dance shifted his works to new areas about 1916. Meeting the writer, painter, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau motivated this in part. Through Cocteau, he managed to meet Sergei Diaghilev and went on to design several sets for the Ballets Russes. Picasso had been experimenting with classical themes for some years before allowing its full run in the early 1920s. His characters got a lot bigger and more imposing, and he often depicted them against the context of a Mediterranean Golden Age.

They have long been connected with the broader conservative tendencies of Europe’s so-called rappel a l’ordre , a period of art now defined as Interwar Classicism. In the mid-1920s, he was influenced by Surrealism, which caused him to rethink his career path. His art evolved into something more expressive, frequently aggressive or provocative. This moment in his career corresponds to the time in his private affairs when his relationship with ballerina Olga Khokhlova began to fall apart and he started a new affair with Marie-Therese Walter.

Undoubtedly, critics have frequently noted how modifications in Pablo Picasso’s paintings style often coincide with shifts in his intimate relationships; his relationship with Khokhlova stretched the years of his involvement in dance, and his subsequent moment with Jacqueline Roque is affiliated with his late stage, in which he had become fixated with his place in history alongside the Old Masters. In the late 1920s, he started working with Julio González, the sculptor.

This was his most major creative collaboration since working with Braque, and it resulted in welded metal artworks that were afterward immensely influential.

Political issues started to distort Picasso’s vision as the 1930s progressed, and continued to do so for some time. In 1937, he was inspired by the bombardment of people in the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War to produce the picture Guernica. During World War II, he resided in Paris, and the German officials left him alone long enough for him to resume his work.

Nevertheless, the war had a significant influence on Picasso, since the Nazis took his Paris art collection and murdered some of his dearest Jewish friends.

Picasso created works in their honor, including sculptures made of harsh, rigid materials like metal in The Charnel House , a particularly horrific successor to Guernica (1945). Following the war, he became deeply active with the Communist Party, and numerous big films from this era, such as War in Korea (1951), demonstrate his newfound dedication.

Late Years and Death

During the 1950s and 1960s, Pablo Picasso concentrated on his own replicas of great works by artists such as Diego Velázquez, Nicolas Poussin, and El Greco. Picasso sought shelter from his stardom in his final years, marrying Jacqueline Rogue in 1961.

His later works were mainly portrait-based, with almost garish color palettes.

Critics have typically regarded them as inferior to his previous work, however, they have gained a more positive reception in recent decades. During this later phase, he also produced a large number of ceramic and metal sculptures. In 1973, he died of a heart attack in the south of France.

The Various Periods of Picasso’s Artworks

Picasso would spend most of his professional adult life in France. His work has been loosely split into periods of time during which he would completely develop complicated topics and sentiments in order to build a unified body of work. The first period was known as the Blue Period.

The Blue Period (1901-1904)

Picasso’s melancholy phase, during which he directly experienced hardship as well as the effects of deprivation on people around him, is marked by basically monochrome works in tones of blue and blue-green, only sometimes brightened by other colors. Picasso’s paintings from this time period portray starvation, prostitution, and portraits of friend Carlos Casagemas following his death, culminating in the dismal allegorical picture La Vie (1903). La Vie depicted his friend’s inner anguish in the face of a girlfriend he attempted to murder.

In considering Picasso and his Blue Period, journalist and writer Charles Morice famously remarked, “Is this alarmingly precocious youngster not destined to confer the sanctity of a masterwork on the unpleasant sensation of existence, the disease from which he appears to be suffering more than anybody else?”

The Rose Period (1904-1906)

According to the term, Picasso had a more cheerful era incorporating pink and orange colors and the lively worlds of circus performers and harlequins after achieving some level of progress and overcoming some of his despair. The artist then encountered Fernande Olivier, a bohemian painter who would also become his lover. She later appears in a few of these more positive works. Pablo Picasso was extremely well received by the art collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein. They were not only his main sponsors but Gertrude was also included in one of his most renowned paintings, Portrait of Gertrude Stein .

African Influences (1907-1909)

The Paul Cezanne exhibition staged at the Salon d’Automne one year after the creator’s death in 1906 was a watershed moment for Picasso. Though Picasso was acquainted with Cezanne before the retrospective, it was not until the exhibition that Picasso realized the full extent of his creative brilliance. Picasso discovered a model for distilling the fundamentals from reality in order to generate a coherent surface that conveyed the artist’s distinct perspective in Cezanne’s works.

Around the same period, the qualities of indigenous African sculpture began to have a strong effect on European painters.

Picasso’s first masterwork was Les Demoiselles d’Avignon . Five nude ladies are depicted in the picture, with bodies composed of flat, fractured surfaces and faces influenced by African masks. A viciously angled cut of melon in the still life of fruit at the bottom of the picture hovers on an unnaturally raised tabletop; the confined space the characters inhabit appears to thrust forward in sharp fragments.

Picasso deviates from conventional European art in this work by incorporating Primitivism and abandoning perspective in lieu of a flat, two-dimensional image plane. It seemed as though the art world had fallen when Les Demoiselles d’Avignon first debuted. Form and presentation as we knew them were utterly discarded. As a result, it was dubbed “the most inventive painting in modern art history.”

Picasso discovered the freedom of expression apart from contemporary and traditional French influences with the new painting tactics he used, and he was able to pave his own path. Formal principles produced during this time paved the way for the Cubist period that followed.

Cubism (1909-1912)

Around 1907, Picasso was driven to give his figures more gravity and form by a convergence of influence ranging from Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne to ancient and tribal artwork. And they eventually led him to Cubism, in which he demolished the perspective standards that had characterized Renaissance painting. During this time period, the style established by Picasso and Braques employed mostly neutral tones and was centered on “breaking apart” items and “evaluating them” in terms of their forms.

Cubism, particularly the second variant known as Synthetic Cubism, had a significant impact on the evolution of the Western art world.

This phase’s works stress the integration, or synthesis, of shapes in the image. Color becomes increasingly significant in the forms of items as they get larger and more beautiful. Non-painted things, such as newspapers or cigarette wrappers, are regularly glued on the canvas alongside painted regions – the inclusion of a wide range of superfluous materials is especially linked with Picasso’s revolutionary collage method. This collage approach highlights texture contrasts and raises the question of what constitutes truth and illusion in painting.

Picasso impacted the course of art for future generations through his use of color, form, and mathematical figures, as well as his unique method of depicting subjects.

Neoclassicism (late 1910s-early 1920s) and Surrealism (mid-1920s)

Picasso made his first journey to Italy in 1917, with an unrivaled command of technique and talent, and immediately began a phase of homage to neoclassical style. Breaking away from severe modernism, he created drawings and paintings evocative of Ingres and Raphael. This was only a prologue to Picasso appearing seamlessly combining his modernist thoughts with his abilities into surrealist masterpieces like Guernica (1937), a frenetic and powerful blend of style that depicts war’s desolation.

“Guernica” is often regarded as modern art’s most devastating anti-war message.

It was done to demonstrate Picasso’s support for the conclusion of the war and his overall denunciation of Nazism. Picasso chose not to depict the tragedy of Guernica in realism or romantic terms from the start. Key characters, such as a lady with extended arms, a bull, and an agonizing horse, are polished in drawing after sketch before being transferred to the expansive painting, which he also remodels multiple times. The somber color scheme and monochromatic theme were utilized to portray the difficult times and the sorrow that was being felt. Guernica questions the heroic nature of the battle and shows it as a horrific act of self-destruction.

The work was not only a functional report or painting, but it also remains a potent political image in modern art, surpassed only by a few frescos by Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

Famous Picasso Paintings

Pablo Picasso’s involvement in Cubism resulted in the growth of collage, in which he rejected the concept of the image as a window on items in the world and started to think of it just as an assemblage of signals that employed various, often metaphorical, techniques to relate to those things. This, too, would have far-reaching consequences for future decades.

Picasso had a diverse attitude to form, and while his work was typically defined by a single dominating approach at any one moment, he frequently moved alternately between multiple styles – occasionally even within the same piece.

His experience with Surrealism influenced not just the delicate shapes and gentle sensuality of pictures of his girlfriend Marie-Therese Walter, but also the sharply jagged iconography of Guernica (1937), the century’s most recognized anti-war artwork. Picasso was always keen to establish himself in history, and some of his most famous pieces, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), allude to a plethora of previous antecedents – even while subverting them.

As he grew older, he became increasingly concerned with ensuring his legacy, and his later work is distinguished by a candid discussion with Old Masters.

The Soup (1903)

The Soup exemplifies Picasso’s Blue Period’s dark sadness, and it was created at the same time as a succession of other paintings devoted to themes of deprivation, aging, and disability. The artwork expresses Picasso’s worry about the deplorable situations he experienced while growing up in Spain, and it was undoubtedly inspired by the religious artwork he grew up with, particularly El Greco. Yet, the artwork represents the broader Symbolist trend of that time.

Picasso eventually regarded his Blue Period works as “nothing except feeling”; reviewers typically sided with him, despite the fact that many of these images are classic and, of course, quite expensive.

https://youtu.be/pQYJqqoR59c?t=95

Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1905)

Gertrude Stein was Picasso’s author, personal friend, and even patron, and she was essential in his development as an artist. This picture, in which Stein is dressed in her beloved brown velvet coat, was completed barely a year before Les Demoiselles d’Avignon , and it represents a significant step in his maturing style.

In comparison to the flat look of several of the Blue and Rose period paintings, the shapes in this portrait appear nearly carved, and they were inspired by the creator’s study of antique Iberian sculpture.

Picasso’s heightened interest in representing a human face as a sequence of flat planes is practically palpable. Stein said that she sat for Picasso 90 times, and while this may be a hyperbole, Picasso undoubtedly struggled for a long time with portraying her head. After attempting it in numerous ways and failing, he painted it out completely one day, claiming, “I can’t perceive you anymore when I look,” and eventually abandoned the image.

He didn’t finish the head until much later, but without the subject in front of him.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

This artwork astounded even Picasso’s dearest artist colleagues, both in terms of content and technique. The theme of naked females was not uncommon, but Picasso’s portrayal of the girls as prostitutes in blatantly sexual attitudes was novel. Picasso’s fascination with Iberian and indigenous artwork is especially obvious in the mask-like faces of three of the females, hinting that their sexuality is not just violent but also primal.

Pablo Picasso also took his spatial explorations a step further by discarding the Renaissance impression of three-dimensionality in favor of presenting a dramatically flattened image plane split up into geometric fragments, a technique Picasso adopted partially from Paul Cézanne’s brushwork.

For example, the leg of the lady on the left is painted as though seen from many perspectives at the same time; it is difficult to discern the leg from the negative space surrounding it, giving the impression that the two are both in the forefront.

When the picture was ultimately shown in public in 1916, it was largely regarded as immoral.

Braque was one of the few painters who studied it thoroughly in 1907, which led straight to his Cubist partnerships with Picasso. Because Les Demoiselles foresaw several of Cubism’s traits, the work is regarded as proto- or pre-Cubism.

Still Life with Chair Caning (1912)

This famous artwork is regarded as the earliest collage in modern art. Picasso had previously attached pre-existing items to his paintings, but this is the first occasion he did so with such a humorous and dramatic aim. The chair caning in the image is made of printed oilcloth, not genuine chair caning, as the title implies.

The rope wrapped around the canvas, on the other hand, is extremely genuine and helps to mimic the carved border of a café table.

Moreover, the spectator can think of the canvas as a glass table, and the chair caning as the actual seat of the chair as perceived through the table. As a result, the image not only contrasts visual space significantly, as is characteristic of Picasso’s experimentation, but it also distorts our perception of what we are looking at.

Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle (1914)

This piece is representative of his Synthetic Cubism, in which he employs numerous techniques to allude to the portrayed things, such as painted dots, shadows, and grains of sand. This paint and mixed media combo is an instance of how Picasso “synthesized” texture and color – inventing wholes after cognitively dissecting the items at hand.

Picasso repressed color during his Analytic Cubist period in order to focus more on the shapes and dimensions of the objects, and this logic certainly informed his predilection for still life all through this period.

The café life undoubtedly summarized modern Parisian life for the painters – he spent a lot of time there conversing with other painters – but the basic array of things also guaranteed that concerns of metaphor and reference could be kept in check.

Ma Jolie (1912)

Picasso explores the boundary between high art and common culture in this painting, pushing his experimentation in new areas. Picasso progresses towards abstraction by diminishing color and heightening the illusion of low-relief sculpture, expanding on the geometric outlines of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon .

Picasso, on the other hand, incorporated painted text on the canvas.

The phrase “ma Jolie” on the cover not only condenses the space more but also links the artwork to a billboard due to their use of an advertisement font. It’s the first instance a painter has publicly utilized elements of popular culture in the creation of high art.

“Ma Jolie” was also the title of a popular tune at the time, as well as Picasso’s nickname for his girlfriend, further tying the painting to popular culture.

The Three Musicians (1921)

There were two versions of Pablo Picasso’s paintings of the musicians. The somewhat smaller version is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, although both are exceptionally enormous for Picasso’s Cubist phase, and he may have decided to create on such a huge scale to commemorate the end of his Synthetic Cubism, which had preoccupied him for over a decade.

He created it during the same summer that he created the extremely dissimilar, classical picture Three Women in the Spring. Some have regarded the images as nostalgic reminiscences of Picasso’s early days; Picasso sits in the middle, as always, the Harlequin, with old acquaintances Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, from whom he had been alienated, on each side.

Three Women at the Spring (1921)

Picasso performed extensive research in preparation for painting this, his most elaborate depiction of an old classical theme. It pays homage to older works by Poussin and Ingres, two titans of classical painting, but it also borrows cues from Greek sculpture , and the figures’ tremendous weight is quite sculptural.

Critics say that the topic attracted him due to the birth of his first son, the figures’ solemn demeanor may be understood by France’s current obsession with remembering the First World War’s deceased.

Guernica (1937)

Picasso painted this painting in response to the shelling of Guernica, a Basque village, on the 26th of April, 1937, amid the Spanish Civil War. It was finished in one month and functioned as the focal point of the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.

While it made quite a commotion during the exhibition, it was subsequently barred from being shown in Spain until the deposition of militaristic tyrant Francisco Franco in 1975.

Much work has been spent deciphering the artwork’s significance, and some feel that the suffering horse in the middle of the canvas relates to the citizens of Spain. The minotaur may refer to bullfighting, a popular national pastime in Spain, but it also has a profound personal meaning for the artist.

Although “Guernica” is without a question Modern art’s most iconic reaction to conflict, critics have been split on the painting’s impact.

Recommended Reading

Pablo Picasso’s biography is a detailed and long journey. It is not always possible to fit every bit of information into an article. Perhaps you are keen to explore Picasso’s drawings and paintings even more in your own time. Here you can find more info on Pablo Picasso’s paintings and life.

Life with Picasso (2019) by Francois Gilot

Françoise Gilot’s honest book is the most comprehensive picture of Picasso ever published, providing an intriguing insight into the emotional and creative lives of two modern artists. In 1943, Françoise Gilot was in her early 20 when she met Pablo Picasso, who was 61 at the time. Born from an upper-middle-class household who had the expectation that she would become a lawyer, the young woman disregarded her parents’ desires and pursued a career as an artist. She was one of Picasso’s muses, but she was rather much her own person, driven to become the extraordinary painter she eventually became.

• The most revealing portrait of Pablo Picasso ever written
• Get fascinating insight into the two artist's intense and creative lives
•  A brilliant self-portrait of a young woman of enormous talent

Picasso: Painting the Blue Period (2021) by Kenneth Brummel

Advanced technology exposes hidden compositions, themes, and modifications, as well as previously undisclosed information on the creator’s materials and method, providing new insights into Picasso’s Blue Period. This multidisciplinary book integrates art history and advanced preservation science to demonstrate how the young Picasso crafted a unique look and a distinguishable artistic identification as he evolved the artistic instruction of fin-de-siècle Paris to the political situation of a troubled Barcelona.

• Get new insights into Picasso's famous Blue Period
• A lavishly illustrated volume that re-examines Picasso's Blue Period
• A combination of art history and advanced conservation science

Picasso’s proclivity to create works in a variety of genres gained him widespread acclaim throughout his career. Let us conclude this article with a few more famous Picasso quotes to get a glimpse inside this quirky and creative artist’s mind: “Every youngster has the potential to be an artist. The issue is how to stay an artist as he grows older.” and “I’m always doing what I can’t do so that I can discover how to do it.”

Frequently Asked Questions

When was picasso born and when did picasso die.

Pablo Picasso was born into a creative family on the 25th of October 1881. He was born in Spain, in the city of Malaga. In 1973, he died of a heart attack in the south of France.

Who Was Pablo Picasso?

Picasso spent most of his professional adult life in France. His work has been roughly divided into time periods in which he would totally develop complex ideas and feelings in order to create a coherent body of work. The first phase was referred to as the Blue Period. The diverse spectrum of Pablo Picasso’s artworks was not the product of significant changes in his style during his career, but rather of his devotion to objectively evaluating the form and approach best suited to achieve his intended effect for each art piece. 

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Pablo Picasso – The Life and Works of This Famous Cubism Artist.” Art in Context. March 2, 2022. URL: https://artincontext.org/pablo-picasso/

Meyer, I. (2022, 2 March). Pablo Picasso – The Life and Works of This Famous Cubism Artist. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/pablo-picasso/

Meyer, Isabella. “Pablo Picasso – The Life and Works of This Famous Cubism Artist.” Art in Context , March 2, 2022. https://artincontext.org/pablo-picasso/ .

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The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors!

Biography Online

Biography Pablo Picasso

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

– Pablo Picasso

Short bio of Pablo Picasso

“When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

—- Pablo Picasso

His early artistic career went through various states. One of the first stages was known as the ‘Blue Period.’ In his late-teens his paintings were dominated by different shades of dark blue; they were also often melancholic. This included a famous self-portrait where Picasso looked much older than his 20 years.

Pablo_Picasso 1905 – ‘At the Lapin Agile;

During 1904-06, Picasso entered a phase known as ‘The Rose Period’ Losing the glumness of his previous ‘Blue Period’, Picasso painted circus clowns, harlequins and people from the circus. The more cheerful and optimistic tone helped to attract an increasing number of patrons and people interested in his work. In particular, the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein, and the art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.  Kahnweiler was influential in helping to put Picasso on a secure financial footing. Picasso later remarked; “What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn’t had a business sense?”

In 1907, Picasso continued his artistic experiments and took inspiration from African art. This led to an early form of cubism and also one of his most controversial paintings – ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ – it is a picture depicting five prostitutes in a brothel. It is an eye-catching and an original exploration of modernism in art, but when displayed in his studio the reaction from art critics was strongly negative.

‘Nature morte au compotier’ – 1914-15, ‘crystal cubism.’

In the years before the First World War, Picasso – along with artists such as Georges Braque – continued to develop a new form of painting known as ‘cubism.’ Cubism involved capturing the essence of the subject on the canvas but exaggerating certain features. The colours were invariably dull – greys, brown and neutrals.

In 1914, Picasso was living in Avignon with fellow artists. His French artist friends were called up to the army, but he was able to continue painting during the war. However, the German-born Kahnweiler was exiled from France and Picasso was left without a dealer.

In 1918, Picasso married ballerina Olga Khokhlova. Shortly after he began a fruitful relationship with the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Rosenberg became good friends with Picasso and helped the couple settle in Paris, giving Picasso a new artistic social circle. Paris was considered an artistic hotspot of the ‘Roaring Twenties,’ attracting many innovative artists. Picasso and his wife Khokholva had a tempestuous relationship. Picasso’s bohemian nature clashed with the social graces of Khokhlova. They remained married until 1955, but Picasso had several affairs and mistresses.

In the 1920s and 30s, Picasso concentrated on more classical works of art. He became interested in depicting the human form in the style of neo-classical. To some extent, he was influenced by artists such as Renoir and Ingres, although he always retained a unique and individual expression.

Picasso had an instinctive and natural compassion for those exposed to suffering, especially if it was as a result of injustice. His natural sympathy and desire for equality led him to join the French Communist party. During the Spanish Civil War, he supported the Republicans and nursed an intense dislike of Franco and what he did to Spain.

Pablo Picasso and Guernica

One of Picasso’s most famous paintings was his mural of the Guernica bombing (1937). The Guernica bombing was carried out by Italian and German planes and involved the carpet bombing of civil areas. The bombing of Guernica was a significant development in modern warfare as it showed a  new capacity for extending the horrors of warfare to the civilian population. The bombing became international news through the English journalist George Steer. Picasso’s painting helped to immortalise the tragedy as a key event in the Twentieth Century. (See: Events that changed the world )

Picasso was so enraged with Franco that he never allowed the painting to go to Spain during Franco’s lifetime. It eventually reached Spain in 1981.

Picasso was well aware of a political dimension to art.

“What do you think an artist is? …he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

— Pablo Picasso

The Dove of Peace by Picasso

Another key painting of Picasso was his simple bird drawing a symbol of peace. Picasso donated it the Soviet-backed World Peace Congress of 1949. It was telling of a new phase in Picasso’s art – the power of simplicity. Picasso was a member of the French Communist Party until his death.

Abundant in artistic inspiration, Picasso was remarkably prolific. His total artistic work numbered close to 50,000. This included 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, and roughly 12,000. He died at the age of 91.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Pablo Picasso”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , 2/11/2007. Last updated 17th March 2017.

Books on Picasso

Related pages

• Was Picasso spiritual? – in-depth article looking at the spiritual side of Pablo Picasso.
• Picasso – The official Website
• Picasso Biography at Artist.org

Inspiration follow your Heart not your Mind

• February 17, 2019 10:00 AM
• By Amos villanueva Villanueva

Pablo Picasso great artist in the whole world.

• July 22, 2018 2:33 AM
• By Rambharat

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30 great biographies to bury yourself in.

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Jonathan Eig's "King: A Life," a biography of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was ... [+] recognized as one of the best books of 2023.

Biographies offer a chance to explore the decision-making and circumstances around some of history’s most fascinating events. The best biography books offer fresh insights into familiar situations that you may have learned about in history class but never explored in-depth. You can learn the unexpected reasoning behind why a president went with option A instead of option B, or how a scientist’s early failures led to a groundbreaking discovery. Biographies often chronicle the lives of famous people, but sometimes they focus on people who never attained celebrity status despite doing extraordinary things. This list of the top biographies includes people of all backgrounds who can teach us things about life, passion, perseverance and more.

Top Biography Books

Biographies are different from autobiographies. A biography is an account of someone’s life written by someone else. An autobiography is an account of someone’s life that they write themselves. For instance, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was written by the Founding Father. But more than two centuries later, Walter Isaacson wrote a biography of Benjamin Franklin.

Some of the most popular and well-known biographies include Isaacson’s recent book about Elon Musk, Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton , which inspired the musical about the former Secretary of the Treasury, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, about a woman who changed the course of modern medicine. The biographies on this list were selected based on critical acclaim, sales and impact on popular culture.

Cincinnati Reds great Pete Rose is the subject of one of the best biographies, a new one called ... [+] "Charlie Hustle."

30. Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O'Brien (2024)

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The newest book on the list, this New York Times bestseller chronicles the highs and lows of baseball’s all-time hits leader, who was banned from the Hall of Fame for betting on baseball. Keith O’Brien looks at FBI records and press coverage to build a comprehensive portrait of the former Cincinnati Reds star.

This book is best for sports fans who want to go beyond Xs and Os. Keith O’Brien’s Charlie Hustle is available from Penguin Random House .

29. The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore (2021)

Kate Moore ( Radium Girls ) uncovers the story of Elizabeth Packard, a woman confined to a mental asylum in the 19 th century for daring to have opinions and push back against social norms by giving a voice to other women like herself. It earned a GoodReads Choice nomination for Best History & Biography.

This book is best for history buffs looking for lesser-known stories. Kate Moore’s The Woman They Could Not Silence is available from Sourcebooks .

28. The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (2021)

Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female physician in the United States in 1849—and perhaps more remarkably, her sister, Emily, soon became the second. This New York Times bestseller traces their journeys and the founding of the famed New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first U.S. hospital run by women.

This book is best for anyone interested in medical history, science pioneers or sibling rivarly. Janice P. Nimura ’s The Doctors Blackwell is available from W.W. Norton .

27. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

There have been many biographies of the 16 th president, but this stands out for presenting his story based around his cabinet, which (as the title suggests) he stacked with his political enemies. Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin presents the story, which inspired Steven Spielberg ’s Oscar-winning movie Lincoln , like a fast-paced novel.

This book is best for those who enjoy the psychology of rivalries. Doris Kearns Goodwin ’s Team of Rivals is available from Simon & Schuster .

Author Doris Kearns Goodwin's Abraham Lincoln biography is one of the best reads about the 16th ... [+] president.

26. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera (2002)

Arguably the most famous Mexican woman of her (or any) generation, Frida Kahlo has inspired many with her art. This biography in turn explores her own inspirations and influences, adding greater depth to her well-known romance with Diego Rivera and other stories. The San Francisco Chronicle said the book made Kahlo “fully human.”

This book is best for those who appreciate art or want to learn more about Mexican history. Hayden Herrera ’s Frida is available from HarperCollins .

25. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2001)

Young mother Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in 1951, but her “immortal cells” live on today, fueling countless medical advances. Yet her family didn’t learn of her contributions until two decades later and didn’t profit from them. Journalist Rebecca Skloot uncovers the racism and disturbing history of discrimination within medicine while telling a human story.

This book is best for anyone who watched the Oprah Winfrey film about Lacks on HBO and wants to learn more. Rebecca Skloot ’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is available from Penguin Random House .

A painting of Henrietta Lacks hangs in the entryway of the Henrietta Lacks Community Center at Lyon ... [+] Homes in the Turner Station neighborhood of Baltimore. She is the subject of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," one of the best biographies.

24. Becoming Dr. Seuss by Brian Jay Jones (2019)

Rhyming isn’t easy, but Dr. Seuss made it look breezy. In this comprehensive look at the former advertising man’s life, Brian Jay Jones traces Theodor Geisel’s career trajectory to political cartoonist and author, as well as discussing some of the views that have received criticism in recent years.

This book is best for anyone who ever read a Dr. Seuss book, which is everyone. Brian Jay Jones ’ Becoming Dr. Seuss is available from Penguin Random House .

23. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)

From his extreme diets to his trademark black turtlenecks, Steve Jobs was a man like none other, for better or worse. Esteemed biographer Walter Isaacson captures the nuance of his personality and the genius that drove him to create companies that made things people feel passionately about. The bestselling book became a 2015 movie.

This book is best for anyone who loves or hates Apple products. Walter Isaacson ’s Steve Jobs is available from Simon & Schuster .

Late Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the subject of an acclaimed biography by Walter Isaacson.

22. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner (2021)

This National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography made the best books of the year list for Time , The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times . It pulls back the curtain on the women who led the largest resistance groups against the Nazis in Germany, including the author’s great-great aunt.

This book is best for those looking for a new perspective on World War II. Rebecca Donner ’s All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days is available from Little, Brown & Co .

21. Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band by Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni, illustrated by Thibault Balahy (2020)

At what price does commercial success come? That question haunted musicians Pat and Lolly Vegas, Native American brothers who influenced stars like Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, as they rose to fame with the Redbone hit “Come and Get Your Love.” But they later shifted their focus to the American Indian Movement.

This book is best for fans of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack and those looking for a different take on Native American history. Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni ’s Redbone is available from Penguin Random House .

20. The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (2023)

Richard Mentor Johnson, vice president under Martin Van Buren, married enslaved Black woman Julia Ann Chinn. Though he refused to give her freedom, he did give her power on his estate. The relationship, which was likely not consensual, ultimately cost him his political career, and this book details how.

This book is best for fans of presidential history looking for untold stories. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers ’ The Vice President’s Black Wife is available from University of North Carolina Press .

19. Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff (2011)

Cleopatra may be the most famous woman in history, but her notoriety has overshadowed her incredible life and accomplishments. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff adds depth to her story through a thoroughly researched history that also dispels misogynistic myths about the queen of Egypt.

This book is best for anyone curious about Egyptian history or who loves the classics . Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra is available from Little, Brown & Co .

Stacy Schiff wrote an outstanding biography of Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

18. All That She Carried by Tiya Miles (2021)

This National Book Award winner and New York Times bestseller chronicles a bag passed down from an enslaved woman to future generations, which becomes the starting point for this poignant and well-researched book about the generational impact of slavery.

This book is best for everyone and should be required reading to humanize topics too often glossed over in political debates. Tiya Miles ’ All That She Carried is available from Simon & Schuster .

17. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne (2011)

Quanah Parker, the biracial son of a pioneer woman who became the last Comanche chief, battled white settlers over land in the American West for decades. The book traces both his personal story (he was undefeated in battle) and the greater implications of the stealing of tribal lands.

This book is best for those looking for new stories about the Old West. S.C. Gwynne ’s Empire of the Summer Moon is available from Simon & Schuster .

16. Becoming Nicole: The inspiring story of transgender actor-activist Nicole Maines and her extraordinary family by Amy Ellis Nutt (2016)

Nicole Maines rose to fame when she became the first transgender woman to play a superhero on TV. Chronicling her journey from adoption to getting the job on Supergirl , this Amazon Editors Pick and New York Times bestseller also shows how her family changed their views on gender identity and the impact on their community.

This book is best for fans of comic books. Amy Ellis Nutt ’s Becoming Nicole is available from Penguin Random House .

Actress Nicole Maines speaks at a "Supergirl" presentation at Comic-Con International. She's the ... [+] subject of a heralded biography.

15. Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird (2016)

The Victoria depicted in history books is way too dry. An Esquire and New York Times pick for best book of 2016, Victoria illuminates how the future monarch went from fifth in line for the crown to a teenage queen to a mother of nine who somehow survived eight attempts on her life.

This book is best for anyone who’s ever struggled with work-life balance. Julia Baird’s Victoria is available from Penguin Random House .

14. The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs (2021)

This remarkable book draws a line between the mothers of three of the most important Black men in American history, celebrating Black motherhood and shining a light on how they resisted Jim Crow while bringing up their sons. It was named one of Amazon's Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2021.

This book is best for parents and anyone interested in civil rights. Anna Malaika Tubbs ’ The Three Mothers is available from Macmillan .

13. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (2004)

Lin-Manuel Miranda was so inspired by this Founding Father biography that he famously wrote some of the music for Hamilton on his honeymoon. Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow follows Alexandar Hamilton from immigration to member of George Washington’s cabinet to death in a duel with his nemesis, Aaron Burr.

This book is best for fans of the Broadway show and presidential history. Ron Chernow ’s Alexander Hamilton is available from Penguin Random House .

"Hamilton" author Ron Chernow and the cast appear onstage at the opening night curtain call for ... [+] "Hamilton" at the Pantages Theatre on August 16, 2017 in Los Angeles.

12. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography by Miriam Pawel (2014)

Pulitzer Prize winner Miriam Pawel tells the story of one of the most influential and revered U.S. labor leaders in this National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. She doesn't cover up his flaws, but she does illustrate why he was so successful while saluting his enduring humanity.

This book is best for those looking for deep dives on labor or Latine history. Miriam Pawel ’s The Crusades of Cesar Chavez is available from Macmillan .

11. Warhol by Blake Gopnik (2020)

Andy Warhol is so famous, you only need to mention his last name for instant recognition. Art critic Blake Gopnik blends understanding of Warhol’s medium with excellent research and conclusions to paint the most complete picture yet of one of the defining artists of the 20 th century.

This book is best for pop culture devotees and fans of art history. Blake Gopnik ’s Warhol is available from HarperCollins .

10. Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright (2018)

The Financial Times and Fortune tabbed this one of the best books of 2018 for telling the unlikeliest of stories: How a Malaysian MBA used Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions to steal billions of dollars he used to pay for real estate, parties—and even the making of The Wolf of Wall Street .

This book is best for Hollywood and movie lovers. Bradley Hope and Tom Wright’s Billion Dollar Whale is available from Hachette Books .

9. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis (2013)

There’s so much more to Rosa Parks’ story than one day on a bus in Montgomery. Jeanne Theoharis takes a comprehensive look at her six decades of activism and why she wasn’t the “accidental catalyst” the history books have made her sound like, regaining Parks her agency.

This book is best for those who know how the Montgomery Bus Boycott began but don’t know about Parks’ earlier involvement in organizing. Jeanne Theoharis’ The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is available from Penguin Random House .

8. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (2005)

The inspiration behind Christopher Nolan ’s summer’s blockbuster film Oppenheimer won the Pulitzer Prize and hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It tells J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life story, with a particular focus on the bomb and how it played into the Cold War.

This book is best for anyone who saw the movie and wants to know more. Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus is available from Penguin Random House .

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7. Self Made: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles (2002)

Madam C.J. Walker, her enslaved parents’ first freeborn child, became one of the wealthiest women of her time. Entirely self-made, she used wealth gained from her cosmetics empire caring for Black hair to help uplift other women and connect with civil rights leaders. The author is Walker’s great-great granddaughter.

This book is best for people obsessed with the Forbes billionaire lists. A’Lelia Bundles ’ Self Made (originally titled On Her Own Ground) is available from Simon & Schuster .

6. Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins—and WWII Heroes by Tim Brady (2021)

World War II is a hugely popular literary period, and here’s another worthy biography from that era, following the Nazi resistance efforts of Dutch teens Hannie Schaft and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. They saved countless children and Jews from concentration camps and even assassinated German soldiers.

This book is best for World War II aficionados and fans of hidden history. Tim Brady’s Three Ordinary Girls is available from Kensington Books .

5. Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly (2018)

This highly rated (4.8/5 stars on Amazon) book incorporates information gleaned from more than 100 interviews, which helped Polly piece together scenes from Lee’s childhood in Hong Kong and the challenges he faced from racism in Hollywood. It also investigates his shocking and still mysterious death.

This book is best for fans of martial arts or who want to know what it was like to be Asian in Hollywood decades ago. Matthew Polly ’s Bruce Lee is available from Simon & Schuster .

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4. Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit (2021)

This finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award explores author George Orwell’s career from a unique angle: looking at his passion for gardening. Rebecca Solnit ties his devotion to his plants to his work as a writer and an antifascist. It presents him in a different light than past biographies.

This book is best for gardeners and those who’ve read 1984 . Rebecca Solnit ’s Orwell’s Roses is available from Penguin Random House .

3. Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth by John Szwed (2015)

Billie Holiday’s story is too often simplified to a rags-to-riches tale focusing on her struggles pre- and post-fame. But her influence, accomplishments and enduring power are far too grand to tokenize. This biography focuses on her music, allowing jazz scholar John Szwed to illustrate what made her so spectacular.

This book is best for jazz and music fans. John Szwed ’s Billie Holiday is available from Penguin Random House .

2. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe (2023)

The Sacklers were once revered for their philanthropy, but the opioid epidemic unmasked how they sold and marketed a painkiller that catalyzed the crisis. This New York Times bestseller traces three generations of the family and their insistence on downplaying the addictiveness of opioids. It asks and answers how they avoided accountability.

This book is best for fans of Hulu’s Dopesick and anyone looking for more information about the opioid crisis. Patrick Radden Keefe ’s Empire of Pain is available from Penguin Random House .

Tufts employee Gabe Ryan removes letters from signage featuring the Sackler family name at the Tufts ... [+] building. The biography "Empire of Pain" details what led to the Sacklers' fall from grace.

1. King: A Life by Jonathan Eig (2023)

Hailed by the New Yorker , Washington Post , Time and Chicago Tribune as one of the best books of 2023, King is a definitive biography of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. It’s also the first to rely on recently declassified FBI files, giving greater depth to the narrative and this unique American story.

This book is best for those who want to go beyond the “I Have a Dream” speech. Jonathan Eig ’s King is available from Macmillan .

What Are The Most Entertaining Biographies?

The most entertaining biographies will teach lessons and impart wisdom while also keeping you on the edge of your seat, anticipating the next development in a storied life. Famed pop culture figures and entertainers make great subjects. 

For an in-depth and fast-paced look at one of our most celebrated jurists, check out 2018’s  Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life by Jane Sherron de Hart. If you want laughs and a behind-the-scenes peek at a seminal variety show, try David Bianculli’s 2010 book The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour . And to lose yourself in a dishy, reads-like-a-novel bio of the ultimate girlboss, try Marisa Meltzer’s 2023 Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier .

What Are The Best Professional Biographies?

The best professional biographies make connections between the habits and hopes of dreamers and their eventual success. They often provide a blueprint for success that readers can adopt for their own lives. 

To learn how to build a truly impressive empire, read Neal Gabler’s 2006  Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination . Another American legend is the subject of T.J. Stiles’ 2010 National Book Award winner The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt , which is as much about capitalism as Vanderbilt. And in 2016’s Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race , Margot Lee Shetterly shows how Black women professionals were discriminated against at NASA—but still helped land a man on the moon. 

What Are The Best Presidential Biographies?

The best presidential biographies reveal never-before-known details about famous leaders’ lives. It can be challenging to dig up something new but so rewarding because it helps our understanding of how these men governed and led. 

Arguably the best presidential biography is Robert Caro’s portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson, starting with 1990’s  The Path to Power , which traces LBJ’s journey from early childhood to the start of his political career. An enduring book is Edmund Morris’ acclaimed 1979 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt , which paints a full picture of a complicated man. And 2017’s  The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Scott S. Greenberger shows that even a long-forgotten president still has influence and value. 

Bottom Line

Biographies offer an escape into someone else’s story, giving you the chance to see why they made their decisions and second-guess them if you like. Whether you prefer biographies focused on history, pop culture or science, you can find a book you’ll love on this list.

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