LIFE
CHILDHOOD
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga Spain on October 25,
1881. His father Don Jose Ruiz Blasco was an art teacher. His mother’s name was Dona
Maria Picasso Lopez. According to Spanish tradition Pablo was given the last name of his
father Ruiz and of mother's Picasso. This is how his name was kept. Pablo Ruiz Picasso.
As a child he was more interested in painting than learning. From the beginning Picasso displayed the bohemian personality. He disliked instruction. The school allowed for Picasso to take his pigeons with him if he would pay the attention to study rather than learning, he painted the pigeons.
His father soon recognized his son’s genuine potential for painting. He encouraged him to paint traditional elements such as nature and people. His father tried his best to maintain Picasso’s rebellious nature throughout his childhood but couldn’t succeed After some years the rebellious side of his character became a distinctive feature of his character.
In 1891 at the age of 10 his family moved to La Coruna, he became his father’s pupil and started his first paintings. At the age of 13 his first exhibition was held in La-Coruna with the support of his father.
In 1895 the family moved to Barcelona. At the age of 15 he performed brilliantly the entrance examination of Barcelona’s School of Fine Arts – ‘La Llotia’. Parents hoped that their son would achieve success as an academic painter.
In 1897 his painting ‘Science of charite’ depicting a doctor, a nun and a child at a sick woman’s bedside was awarded honorable mention in Madrid at the Fine Arts Exhibition. Finally he was settled down in the Spanish capital Madrid. He spent his time recording life around him, in the café, on the streets, in brothels. Where he discovered Spanish paintings. In 1898 he fell ill and spent most of the time of the year in Catalan village in the company of his Barcelona friend Manuel Pallares. In early 1899 he was a changed man; he had put on weight and had learned to live on his own in the open countryside. He made up his mind to break with his art school training and to reject his family’s plans for his future. He decided to prefer his mother’s surname and dropped the Ruiz altogether. In Barcelona Picasso moved among a circle of Catalan artists and writers whose eyes were turned towards Paris. These were his friends at the Café Ells Quatre Gats where Picasso had his Barcelona exhibition in February 1900 and they were the subject of more than 50 portraits in the show. In addition there was a dark, moody "modernista", |
Picasso returned to Spain with Casagemas about who had
become future of his love affair and Picasso tried to amuse him. Casagemas returned to
Paris and attempted to shoot the lady he loved then shoot himself and died. The effect of
this incident was very deep on Picasso. He had gained the emotional experience and the
material that would stimulate the powerful expression of the works of the so called
‘Blue Period’ because various shades of blue dominated his work for the next few
years. He made two death portraits of Casagemas in 1901 as well as two funeral scenes
(Personnes on deuil and Evocation).
Between 1901 and mid 1904 when blue was the predominant color in his paintings, Picasso moved back between Barcelona and Paris with his work material from one place to another, he moved to Paris just a few days before his 19th birthday. He didn’t know French and having no place to stay. But he didn’t bother about it. He spent most of his time in Streets, at café, in the Louvere at the Universal Exhibition, at the Grand an Petit Palais, in the odd whore house. In Paris he visited to the Woman’s Prison of Saint Lazare (1901-1902) which provided him free models. The subject of maternity also occupied Picasso at a time when he was searching for material that would best express traditional art-historical subjects in 20th Century.
Finally he made the decision to move permanently to Paris in 1904. Shortly after settling in Paris he met Fernande Oliver. His good relationship with Fernande Oliver reflected on his work change of spirit and specially a change of intellectual and artistic currents. He changed his palette to pink and reds, introducing the so called Rose Period (1904-05). Many of his subjects were drawn from the circus, which he visited several times a week. He and his friend Gullaume Apollinaire painted some portraits together their performers ‘Acrobate a la boute’ (1905), ‘Lacteur’ (1905) became a kind of evocation of artist’s position in modern society. Picasso peculiarly made his identification in ‘Famille de Salimabanques (1905).
