Pablo Picasso
By Illa Vij
PABLO was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881. He was the eldest child and the only son of his loving parents. His father, Don Jose Ruiz, too was a well-known painter and a professor at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts.
As a child, Pablo helped his father in many of his paintings. At the age of 12, Don Jose handed Pablo his palette, indicating that the son had reached a point where he was ready to overtake the father. Entrance to the top class at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts was based on a painting examination which could be completed in a month’s time. Pablo took a day to complete it and did it remarkably well too.
At the age of 16, he gained admission to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. With great confidence and enthusiasm, he moved to Paris to gain a place for himself in the city seething with creativity, especially art. His studio in Paris became a meeting place for young writers and artists.
By 1906, Pablo Picasso had earned himself a name and in 1907, he made the well-known painting Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (Ladies of Avignon). In this he used a technique called cubism. Initially, it was not appreciated by all, but in a couple of years time, cubism became a highly accepted trend in art.
Picasso broke off from the traditional style of painting. Earlier artists felt that there must be some relationship between the painting on the canavas and the subject being painted. But, Picasso painted figures and objects as interlocking geometrical forms of light and colour. This style came to be called cubism. He used various angles and strokes. Cubism led to what we call modern art.
As a painter, Picasso had his moods and his own timings for painting. Quick in his movement and fast in building up his creative imagination, at times he completed two to three paintings in a day. His wife, Jacqueline, gave him complete support while he worked and was always around him, to look into all his needs. A devoted wife was definitely an asset to him. Animals interested him and he enjoyed keeping a couple of pet dogs at home. He was not very social. He was aware of all political movement and expressed his views through his paintings.
The Republican Govern-ment of Spain asked him to make a painting for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. He produced a masterpiece titled Guernica (name of a bombed town). It was a massive creation, with images of civil wars, misery and disaster. The destruction portrayed made the entire scene come alive. In 1967, one of his paintings was sold at Sotheby’s for Rs 36.1 lakh. He made thousands and thousands of paintings and was one of the richest painters who ever lived.
Many critics complained that his work was tough to understand. Reacting to such remarks, Picasso felt that when a person has no knowledge of a particular thing or a subject, how can he understand it. A person not knowing English, will find an English textbook a blank one, similarly those who know nothing about art, will not understand it. Picasso spent the later years of his life at his villa in Mougins, France. He died in 1973, leaving behind rich, exquisite inimitable pieces of creation.