Famous artists: Pablo Picasso

Who was he?

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga in Spain in 1881. His father, an art teacher, sent him to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid when Picasso was 16. After leaving Madrid Picasso went to Paris, where he met other artists like Georges Braque and began the paintings in his ‘blue’ and ‘rose’ periods. He also discovered African art and, together with Braque, invented a style called ‘cubism’ in the early 1900s. Picasso continued to develop the style in his paintings, sculptures and collages, which were exhibited across Europe and America. He lived in Paris during the Second World War, when the Nazis banned him from exhibiting his art, although he continued to paint in his studio. After a string of love affairs, Picasso moved to the South of France with his second wife Jacqueline Roque after the war, where he continued to work until he died during a dinner party at his villa in 1973.

Why is he famous?

Although Picasso made art in a wide variety of styles, he is most famous for inventing cubism. Cubism is a style where the three dimensions of an object are laid on a flat surface, so it appears that you are looking at it from every angle at once, and gets its name from the lines and angles artists used to achieve this effect. Picasso later combined this with collage techniques to create what became known as ‘synthetic cubism’. One of Picasso’s most famous ‘synthetic cubism’ paintings is Guernica, an enormous mural inspired by the German bombing of a Spanish town during the Spanish Civil War. Cubism had a massive effect on the art world at the time, and also influenced later artistic styles like pop art.

Famous quotes

'Art is a lie that makes us realise truth'

'Bad artists copy. Good artists steal'

'Everything you can imagine is real'

Related links

• See a Pablo Picasso gallery
• Picasso museum
• Read more about cubism

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