This Saturday (April 8) marks 50 years since the death of perhaps the best-known figure in the art world: Pablo Ruiz Picasso.
The Spanish artist is estimated to have completed 13,500 paintings during his life, along with around 100,000 prints and engravings.
You probably already know his work is worth millions and that he had a penchant for cubes – but how much do you really know about Pablo Picasso?
As we approach the anniversary of his passing, we thought it best to brush up on the life, loves, and groundbreaking work of this artistic juggernaut.
Here’s our guide to the must-know facts on arguably the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
Picasso was a child genius
Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s father was also an artist, a professor at a nearby art school in Málaga, Spain, as well as the curator of a local museum. Picasso’s first word was said to have been “piz”, a shortening of the Spanish word for pencil. By the age of 14 he was producing quite extraordinary artwork, including a superb naturalistic painting of his sister Lola attending communion, and a beautiful pastel drawing of his mother.
His Blue Period was provoked by a real-life tragedy
In 1901, poet and art student Carlos Casagemas shot himself in the head in Paris, broken-hearted after the repeated rebuttals of his unrequited love – who he also shot and injured in the incident. He was a friend of Picasso’s, who was devastated by the loss. It was in the following months that Picasso began to create paintings characterised by cool blue tones and depicting emaciated, poverty-stricken subjects, in a stretch referred to many as his Blue Period.
...But his Rose Period was inspired by love
Three years after Casagemas’s death, the monochromatic cloud that haunted Picasso’s painting began to lift, as rusts and roses slowly trickled back into his painting. Artworks depicted circus performers, floral backgrounds and summery light, with the malnourished mother and child that frequented his Blue Period paintings replaced by well-fed counterparts. Many have attributed this to Picasso’s new relationship with artist and model Fernande Olivier, who appeared in more than 60 of his portraits.
He wasn’t short of female muses
Loves in Picasso’s life weren’t exactly few or far between – nor were lusts for that matter. Picasso married twice, once to Olga Khokhlova and again to Jacqueline Roque in 1961. Yet in between and often overlapping these marriages were a multitude of affairs with women who frequently appeared in Picasso’s work. These included photographer Dora Maar, artist and writer Françoise Gilot (with whom he shared two children) and Marie-Thérèse Walter. Picasso may have painted near countless portraits of his lovers, but his attitude to women was not always admirable: he once told Gilot that women were either “goddesses and doormats.”
African art was a major influence
In 1906, everything changed for Picasso again, when an introduction to African art flipped his approach to portraiture on its head. He became fascinated by African tribal masks and the way they simplified, exaggerated or reshaped body parts, often for the purpose of communicating spiritual attributes. They were immensely influential in Picasso’s move towards abstraction, and it was these experiments that would form the basis of cubism.
He created several different types of cubism
Inspired by works by Paul Cézanne and the African masks, Picasso began to address the physicality of his subjects. Working with fellow artist Georges Braque, he simplified their forms into geometric shapes, before structuring all three of their dimensions on a flat canvas. Cubism was born – but that wasn’t the end of the story. Picasso initial experiments are described as “Analytical” cubism: rigidly structured investigations breaking down an object into its myriad viewpoints, all patchworked in tones of grey and brown. Later, this shifted into “Synthetic” cubism, when Picasso moved towards simpler forms, brighter colours and elements of collage.
He painted 58 versions of Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas (yes, really)
Later on in his career, Picasso became obsessed with certain Old Masters paintings. He painted 15 versions of Eugene Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in their Apartment, but it was Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas that became his most fervent fixation. The painting by the Spanish master depicts the court of King Phillip IV of Spain, and is revered by historians for its ground-breaking investigations into multiple viewpoints and reflection. From large scale copies of the entire scene to individual portraits of the painting’s various characters, Picasso made 58 versions of Las Meninas in 1957 alone.
His Guernica painting is one of the art world’s most enduring symbols of war
When Picasso was asked by the Spanish Republican government to create a mural for the 1937 World’s Fair, he was initially making studies of his own studio. Yet when he heard about the tragic destruction of the Basque city of Guernica by Nazi bombing during the Spanish Civil War, he was moved to create the chaotically composed, heart-wrenching mural that remains a worldwide symbol of the horrors of war. So powerful was it that the UN even commissioned a tapestry version of the painting to be displayed at their New York headquarters.
He hung out with Surrealists
In the 1920s Picasso reverted back to his realist roots and entered a Neo-Classical phase of painting, with figures alluding to Greek and Roman art. Being Picasso, this was never going to be a boring move – this switch in direction was coupled with an intrigue into the work made by Surrealist artists. Sex and the subconscious began to infiltrate his work, with Surrealist pioneer Andre Breton even referring to Picasso as “one of ours” in a 1925 article.
...And he really loved making pots
Picasso wasn’t all about painting. In his later career from the late 1940s onwards, Picasso took up ceramics. Initially he intended for it to be a relaxing activity to enjoy during his summers on the French Riviera, but the material soon grew to be of crucial artistic importance to Picasso. It is estimated that he made 2880 ceramic pieces. It may sound like a lot, but consider that Picasso was remarkably prolific. He is estimated to have made 50,000 works of art in his lifetime, including 1885 paintings, 1228 sculptures and a plethora of drawings, prints, rugs and tapestries. In other words, he worked pretty hard.
