The heirs of a genius, or who inherited the multi-billion dollar legacy of the brilliant painter Pablo Picasso. Maria Lopez, mother of Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso and Fernanda Olivier

As I wrote in a previous post about the film "Picasso", after watching it I wanted to learn more about the life and work of this artist.

Found this wonderful collection rigenser

This post contains a lot of interesting facts, most of which became known to me thanks to the movie "Picasso".

I copy for myself (Neznakomka_18)

"Whenever I want to say something, I speak in the manner in which,
I feel like it should be said." Pablo Picasso.

When he was born, the midwife thought he was stillborn.
Picasso was rescued by his uncle. “Doctors at that time smoked big cigars, and my uncle
was no exception. When he saw me lying motionless
he blew smoke in my face, to which I, with a grimace, let out a roar of rage."

Above: Pablo Picasso in Spain
Photo: LP / Roger-Viollet / Rex Features

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Andalusian
provinces of Spain.
Picasso was baptized with the full name of Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula.
Juan Nepomuseno Maria de los Remedios Crispin Crispignano de la Santisima
Trinidad Ruiz and Picasso - which, according to Spanish custom, was a series of names
revered saints and relatives of the family.
Picasso - mother's surname, which Pablo took, since his father's surname
seemed too ordinary to him, besides, Picasso's father, José Ruiz,
he himself was an artist.

Above: Painter Pablo Picasso in Mougins, France in 1971,
two years before his death.
Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Picasso's first word was "Piz" - which is short for "La piz",
which means pencil, in spanish.

Picasso's first painting was called "Picador"
man riding a horse in a bullfight.
The first exhibition of Picasso took place when he was 13,
in the back room of the umbrella shop.
At the age of 13, Pablo Picasso entered the
Barcelona Academy of Arts.
But in 1897, at the age of 16, he came to Madrid to study at the School of Arts.

"First Communion". 1896 The painting was created by 15-year-old Picasso

"Self-portrait". 1896
Technique: Oil on canvas. Collection: Barcelona, ​​Picasso Museum

"Knowledge and Mercy". 1897 The painting was painted by 16 year old Pablo Picasso.

As an adult and having once visited an exhibition of children's drawings, Picasso said:
"At their age, I drew like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to
to learn how to draw like them."

Pablo Picasso painted his masterpiece in 1901,
when the artist was only 20 years old.

Picasso was once interrogated by the police for having stolen the Mona Lisa.
After the painting disappeared from the Louvre in Paris in 1911, the poet and "friend"
Guillaume Apollinaire pointed his finger at Picasso.

Child and dove, 1901. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
currently on display as part of the Courtauld Gallery's Becoming Picasso exhibition.
Picture: Private collection.

Picasso burned some of his paintings when he was an aspiring artist in Paris,
to keep warm.

Above: The Absinthe Drinker, 1901. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Photo: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Pablo Picasso.Ironer.1904
Allegedly in this work is a disguised self-portrait of Picasso!
(maybe it was my fantasy, but I see at least four of his self-portraits here! (Neznakomka_18)

Picasso's sister Conchita died of diphtheria in 1895.

Picasso met French painter Henri Matisse in 1905
at the home of writer Gertrude Stein.

Above: Dwarf-Dancer, 1901 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
currently exhibited as part of the Courtauld Gallery's Become Picasso exhibition.

Photo: Picasso Museum, Barcelona (gasull Fotografia)

Pablo Picasso. Woman with a crow. 1904

Picasso had many mistresses.
Women of Picasso - Fernanda Olivier, Marcel Humbert, Olga Khokhlova,
Maria Theresa Walter, Françoise Gilot, Dora Maar, Jacqueline Roque...

The first wife of Pablo Picasso was the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.
In the spring of 1917, the poet Jean Cocteau, who collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev,
invited Picasso to sketch costumes and scenery for the future ballet.
The artist went to work in Rome, where he fell in love with one of the dancers of the Diaghilev troupe -
Olga Khokhlova. Diaghilev, noticing Picasso's interest in the ballerina, considered it his duty
to warn the hot Spanish rake that Russian girls are not easy -
they should be married...
They got married in 1918. The wedding took place in Paris Orthodox Cathedral
Alexander Nevsky, among the guests and witnesses were Diaghilev, Apollinaire, Cocteau,
Gertrude Stein, Matisse.
Picasso was convinced that he would marry for life, and therefore in his marriage contract
included an article stating that their property is common.
In the event of a divorce, this meant dividing it equally, including all the paintings.
And in 1921 their son Paul was born.
However, the life of a married couple did not work out ...
but it was the only official wife of Pablo,
they were not divorced.

Pablo Picasso and Olga Khokhlova.

Pablo Picasso. Olga.

Picasso painted her a lot in a purely realistic manner, which she herself insisted on.
a ballerina who did not like incomprehensible experiments in painting.
“I want,” she said, “to know my face.”

Pablo Picasso.Portrait of Olga Khokhlova.

Françoise Gilot.
This amazing woman managed to fill Picasso with strength without wasting her own.
She gave him two children and managed to prove that the family idyll is not a utopia,
but a reality that exists for free and loving people.
The children of Francoise and Pablo received the surname Picasso and after the death of the artist became
part of his fortune.
Françoise put an end to her relationship with the artist herself, having learned about his infidelity.
Unlike many of the master's lovers, Françoise Gilot did not go mad and did not commit suicide.

Feeling that the love story came to an end, she herself left Picasso,
not giving him the opportunity to replenish the list of abandoned and devastated women.
By publishing the book “My Life with Picasso”, Françoise Gilot went against the will of the artist in many ways,
but gained worldwide fame.

Françoise Gilot and Picasso.

With Francoise and children.

Picasso had four children with three women.
Above: Pablo Picasso with the two children of his mistress Françoise Gilot,
Claude Picasso (left) and Paloma Picasso.
Photo: REX

Children of Picasso.Claude and Paloma.Paris.

Marie-Therese Walter gave birth to his daughter Maya.

He married his second wife, Jacqueline Rock, when he was 79 (she was 27).

Jacqueline remains the last and faithful woman of Picasso and looks after him,
already sick, blind and hard of hearing, until his death.

Picasso. Jacqueline with crossed arms, 1954

One of Picasso's many muses was the dachshund Lump.
(That's right, in the German manner. Lump in German - "scumbags").
The dog belonged to photographer David Douglas Duncan.
She died a week before Picasso.

There are several periods in the work of Pablo Picasso: blue, pink, African ...

The "blue" (1901-1904) period includes works created between 1901 and 1904.
Gray-blue and blue-green deep cold colors, colors of sadness and despondency, constantly
are present in them. Picasso called blue "the color of all colors".
Frequent subjects of these paintings are emaciated mothers with children, vagabonds, beggars, and the blind.

"A beggar old man with a boy" (1903) Museum of Fine Arts. Moscow.

"Mother and Child" (1904, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)

Blind Man's Breakfast. 1903 Collection: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Pink period" (1904 - 1906) is characterized by more cheerful tones - ocher
and pink as well as enduring image themes - harlequins, itinerant actors,
acrobats
Fascinated by the comedians who became the models for his paintings, he frequented the Medrano circus;
at this time, the harlequin is Picasso's favorite character.

Pablo Picasso, two acrobats with a dog, 1905

Pablo Picasso, Boy with a pipe, 1905

"African" period (1907 - 1909)
In 1907, the famous "Girls of Avignon" appeared. The artist worked on them for more than a year -
long and carefully, as he had not worked on his other paintings before.
The first reaction of the public is shock. Matisse was furious. Even most of my friends didn't accept this job.
"It feels like you wanted to feed us tow or give us gasoline to drink,"
said the painter Georges Braque, Picasso's new friend. Scandalous picture, whose name he gave
poet A. Salmon, was the first step in painting on the way to cubism, and many art critics consider
its starting point for modern art.

Queen Isabella. 1908 cubism Museum of Fine Arts. Moscow.

Picasso was also a writer. He wrote about 300 poems and two plays.

Above: Harlequin and Companion, 1901. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
currently exhibited as part of the Courtauld Gallery in the Become Picasso exhibition.
Photo: State Museum of A. S. Pushkin, Moscow

Acrobats. Mother and son. 1905

Pablo Picasso. Lovers. 1923

Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" painting depicting him
mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, was sold at auction for $106.5 million.
This broke the record for paintings sold at auction,
which was set by Munch's painting "The Scream".

More Picasso paintings have been stolen than any other artist.
550 of his works are listed as missing.
Above: Weeping Woman 1937 by Pablo Picasso
Photo: Guy Bell / Alamy

Together with Georges Braque, Picasso founded cubism.
He also worked in styles:
Neoclassicism (1918 - 1925)
Surrealism (1925 - 1936), etc.

Pablo Picasso. Two girls reading.

Picasso donated his sculptures to the society in Chicago, USA in 1967.
He gave unsigned paintings to his friends.
He said: otherwise you will sell them when I die.

Olga Khokhlova in recent years lived in Cannes all alone.
She was ill for a long time and painfully, and on February 11, 1955, she died of cancer.
at the city hospital. Only her son and a few friends attended the funeral.
Picasso at that time in Paris was finishing the painting "Women of Algeria" and did not come.

Picasso's two mistresses, Marie-Thérèse Walter and Jacqueline Roque (who became his wife)
committed suicide. Maria Theresa hanged herself four years after his death.
Rock shot herself in 1986, 13 years after Picasso's death.

Pablo Picasso's mother said: "With my son, who was created only for himself
and for no one else, no woman can be happy"

Above: Seated Harlequin, 1901. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
currently exhibited as part of the Courtauld Gallery in the Become Picasso exhibition.
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art Metropolitan Museum / Art Resource / Scala, Florence

According to the proverb, Spain is a country where men despise sex,
but live for it. "In the morning - a church, in the afternoon - bullfighting, in the evening - a brothel" -
This credo of the Spanish machos was sacredly adhered to by Picasso.
The artist himself said that art and sexuality are one and the same.

Pablo Picasso and Jean Cacto at a bullfight in Vallauris, 1955

Above: Pablo Picasso's Guernica, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Painting by Picasso "Guernica" (1937).

Guernica is a small Basque town in northern Spain, almost wiped off the face of the earth by German aircraft on May 1, 1937.
In 3 hours, several thousand bombs were dropped on Guernica, as a result of which the 6,000th city was destroyed.

Picasso was so struck by what happened that he expressed his emotions on the canvas. "Guernica" was written in just a month.

One day the Gestapo ransacked Picasso's house. A Nazi officer, seeing a photograph of Guernica on the table, asked: "Did you do that?" "No," the artist replied, "you did it."

(This story was included in the film and I was very impressed. What fearlessness and what resourcefulness !!! (Neznakomka_18 )

During the Second World War, Picasso lives in France, where he becomes close to the communists.
members of the Resistance (in 1944, Picasso even joins the French Communist Party).

In 1949, Picasso paints his famous "Dove of Peace" on a poster.
World Peace Congress in Paris.

In the photo: Picasso paints a dove on the wall of his house in Mougins. August 1955.

Picasso's last words were "Drink for me, drink for my health,
you know I can't drink anymore."
He died while he and his wife, Jacqueline Rock, were entertaining friends over dinner.

Picasso was buried at the base of the castle he bought in 1958.
in Vauvenargues, in the south of France.
He was 91 years old. Shortly before his death, distinguished by a prophetic gift
artist said:
“My death will be a shipwreck.
When a large ship dies, everything that is around it is drawn into the funnel.

And so it happened. His grandson Pablito asked to be allowed to attend the funeral,
but the artist's last wife, Jacqueline Rock, refused.
On the day of the funeral, Pablito drank a bottle of decoloran, a bleaching chemical
liquid. Save Pablito failed.
He was buried in the same grave in the cemetery in Cannes, where Olga's ashes rest.

On June 6, 1975, 54-year-old Paul Picasso died of cirrhosis of the liver.
His two children are Marina and Bernard, Pablo Picasso's last wife Jacqueline
and three more illegitimate children - Maya (daughter of Marie-Therese Walter),
Claude and Paloma (children of Francoise Gilot) - were recognized as the heirs of the artist.
Long battles for the inheritance began

Marina Picasso, who inherited her grandfather's famous mansion "Residence of the King" in Cannes,
lives there with her adult daughter and son and three adopted Vietnamese children.
She makes no distinction between them, and has already made a will, according to which
her entire vast fortune after her death will be divided into five equal parts.
Marina created a foundation bearing her name, which she built in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City
village of 24 houses for 360 Vietnamese orphans.

“Love for children,” emphasizes Marina, “I inherited from my grandmother.
Olga was the only person from the entire Picasso clan who treated us, grandchildren,
with tenderness and care. And my book "Children living at the end of the world" I in many ways
wrote in order to restore her good name.

Pablo Picasso is a Spanish painter, the founder of cubism, according to a 2009 The Times poll, the most famous artist of the 20th century.

The future genius was born on October 25, 1881 in Andalusia, in the village of Malaga. José Ruiz's father was a painter. Ruiz did not become famous for his work, so he was forced to get a job at a local museum of fine arts as a caretaker. Mother Maria Picasso Lopez belonged to a wealthy family of grape plantation owners, but from childhood she experienced what poverty was like, as her father left the family and moved to America.

When José and Maria had their first child, they named him Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuseno Maria de los Remedios Crispin Crispignano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, which traditionally listed revered ancestors and Catholic saints. After the birth of Pablo, two more girls appeared in the family - Dolores and Conchita, whom the mother loved less than her adored son.

The boy was very handsome and talented. At the age of 7, he already began to help his father in painting canvases. At the age of 13, José allowed his son to complete a large part of the work and was very surprised by the skill of Pablo. After this incident, the father gave all his art supplies to the boy, and he himself stopped writing.

Studies

In the same year, the young man enters the Academy of Arts in the city of Barcelona. It was not without difficulty that Pablo managed to convince the teaching staff of the university of his professional viability. After three years of study, having gained experience, the young student is transferred to Madrid to the prestigious San Fernando Academy, where for six months he studies the technique of the work of Spanish artists, and. Here Picasso creates the paintings "First Communion", "Self-Portrait", "Portrait of a Mother".

Due to his wayward character and free lifestyle, the young painter failed to stay within the walls of the educational institution, therefore, having dropped out of school, Pablo embarks on a free voyage. By that time, the same obstinate American student Carles Casagemas, with whom Pablo repeatedly visits Paris, becomes his close friend.

Friends devoted their first trips to studying the paintings of Delacroix, Toulouse Lautrec, as well as ancient Phoenician, Egyptian frescoes, Japanese engravings. Young people made acquaintance not only with representatives of Bohemia, but also with wealthy collectors.

Creation

For the first time, Pablo begins signing his own paintings with the pseudonym Picasso, his mother's maiden name. In 1901, a tragedy occurs that left its mark on the artist's work: his friend Carles commits suicide because of unhappy love. In memory of this event, Pablo creates a number of paintings that are usually attributed to the first "Blue Period".

The abundance of blue and gray colors in the paintings is explained not only by the depressed state of the young man, but also by the lack of funds for oil paint of other shades. Picasso paints the works "Portrait of Jaime Sabartes", "Date", "Tragedy", "Old Jew with a Boy". All paintings are permeated with a sense of anxiety, despondency, fear and longing. The writing technique becomes angular, torn, the perspective is replaced by the rigid contours of flat figures.

In 1904, despite the lack of finances, Pablo Picasso decided to move to the capital of France, where new experiences and events awaited him. The change of residence gave impetus to the second period of the artist's work, which is commonly called "Pink". In many ways, the cheerfulness of the paintings and their plot line was influenced by the place where Pablo Picasso lived.

At the base of the Montmartre hill stood the circus Medrano, whose artists served as nature for the works of the young artist. In two years, a whole series of paintings “Actor”, “Seated Nude”, “Woman in a Shirt”, “Acrobats. Mother and son”, “Family of comedians”. In 1905, the most significant painting of this period, "The Girl on the Ball", appeared. After 8 years, the painting was acquired by the Russian philanthropist I. A. Morozov, who brought it to Russia. In 1948, "The Girl on the Ball" was exhibited at the Museum. , where it remains to this day.

The artist is gradually moving away from the image of nature as such, modernist motifs appear in his work using pure geometric shapes that make up the structure of the depicted object. Picasso intuitively approached a new direction when he created a portrait of his admirer and philanthropist Gertrude Stein.

At the age of 28, Picasso painted the painting “The Girls of Avignon”, which became the forerunner of works written in the style of cubism. The portrait ensemble, which depicted naked beauties, was met with a large stream of criticism, but Pablo Picasso continued to develop the found direction.

Beginning in 1908, the canvases “Can and Bowls”, “Three Women”, “Woman with a Fan”, “Portrait of Ambroise Vollard”, “Factory in Horta de San Juan”, “Portrait of Fernanda Olivier”, “Portrait of Kahnweiler”, “Still Life with a Wicker Chair”, “Bottle of Pernod”, “Violin and Guitar” appeared. New works are characterized by a gradual increase in posterity of images, approaching abstractionism. Finally, Pablo Picasso, despite the scandalousness, begins to earn good money: paintings painted in a new style make a profit.

In 1917, Pablo Picasso was given the opportunity to collaborate with the Russian Seasons. Jean Cocteau proposed to the master of the ballet the candidacy of a Spanish artist as the creator of sketches for the sets and costumes for new productions. To work for a while, Picasso moved to Rome, where he met his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, a Russian dancer, the daughter of an exiled officer.

The bright period of his life was also reflected in the artist's work - for a time, Picasso departs from cubism, and creates a number of paintings in the spirit of classical realism. These are, first of all, "Portrait of Olga in an armchair", "Bathers", "Women running along the beach", "Children's portrait of Paul Picasso".

Surrealism

Fed up with the life of a wealthy bourgeois, Pablo Picasso returns to his former bohemian existence. The turning point was marked by the writing in 1925 of the first painting in a surrealistic manner "Dance". The distorted figures of the dancers, the general feeling of pain settled in the artist's work for a long time.

Dissatisfaction with personal life was reflected in Picasso's misogynistic paintings "Mirror", "Girl in front of a mirror". In the 30s, Pablo became interested in creating sculptures. The works “Reclining Woman”, “Man with a Bouquet” appear. One of the artist's experiments is the creation of illustrations in the form of engravings for the works of Ovid and Aristophanes.

War period

During the years of the Spanish Revolution and the war, Pablo Picasso is in Paris. In 1937, the artist creates the canvas “Guernica” in black and white by order of the Spanish government for the World Exhibition in Paris. A small town in northern Spain was completely razed to the ground in the spring of 1937 by German aircraft. The folk tragedy was reflected in the collective images of a dead warrior, a grieving mother, and people cut into pieces. Picasso's symbol of war is the image of the Minotaur bull with large indifferent eyes. Since 1992, the canvas has been kept in the Museum of Madrid.

At the end of the 30s, the paintings "Night fishing in Antibes", "Weeping Woman" appeared. During the war, Picasso did not emigrate from German-occupied Paris. Even in cramped living conditions, the artist continued to work. Themes of death and war appear in his paintings "Still Life with a Bull's Skull", "Morning Serenade", "Slaughterhouse" and the sculpture "Man with a Lamb".

post-war period

The joy of life again settles in the paintings of the master, created in the post-war period. The brilliance of the palette and light images were embodied in a cycle of life-affirming panels that Picasso created for a private collection in collaboration with the artists Paloma and Claude Already.

The favorite subject of this period for Picasso is ancient Greek mythology. She is embodied not only in the paintings of the master, but also in ceramics, which Picasso became interested in. In 1949, for the World Congress of Peace Supporters, the artist paints the canvas “Dove of Peace”. The master creates and variations in the style of cubism on the themes of painters of the past - Velasquez, Goya,.

Personal life

From a young age, Picasso was constantly in love with someone. In his youth, models and dancers became friends and muses of a novice artist. Young Pablo Picasso experienced his first love while studying in Barcelona. The girl's name was Rosita del Oro, she worked in a cabaret. In Madrid, the artist met Fernando, who became his faithful friend for several years. In Paris, fate brought the young man to the miniature Marcel Humbert, whom everyone called Eve, but the sudden death of the girl separated the lovers.

While working in Rome with a Russian ballet company, Pablo Picasso marries Olga Khokhlova. The newlyweds got married in a Russian church on the outskirts of Paris, and then moved to a mansion on the seashore. The girl's dowry, as well as income from the sale of Picasso's works, allowed the family to lead the life of a wealthy bourgeois. Three years after the wedding, Olga and Pablo have their first child, the son of Paulo.

Soon Picasso is fed up with the good life and again becomes a free artist. He settles separately from his wife and begins dating a young girl, Marie-Therese Walter. From an extramarital union in 1935, Maya's daughter was born, whom Picasso never recognized.

During the war, the next muse of the master was the Yugoslav subject, the photographer Dora Maar, who, with her work, pushed the artist to search for new forms and content. Dora went down in history as the owner of a large collection of Picasso paintings, which she kept until the end of her life. Also known are her photographs of the canvas “Guernica”, which depict the entire path of creating the painting in stages.

After the war, the artist met Francoise Gilot, who brought a note of joy to his work. Children are born - son Claude and daughter Paloma. But in the early 60s, Jacqueline leaves the master because of his constant betrayals. The last muse and second official wife of the 80-year-old artist is the ordinary saleswoman Jacqueline Rock, who idolized Pablo and had a great influence on his social circle. After the death of Picasso, 13 years later, Jacqueline could not stand the separation and committed suicide.

Death

In the 60s, Picasso devoted himself entirely to the creation of female portraits. His last wife, Jacqueline Rock, poses for the artist as a model. By the end of his life, Pablo Picasso already had a multi-million dollar fortune and several personal castles.

Three years before the death of a genius in Barcelona, ​​a museum named after him was opened, and 12 years after his death, a museum in Paris. During his long creative biography, Picasso created 80 thousand paintings, more than 1000 sculptures, collages, drawings, prints.

Paintings

• "First Communion", 1895-1896
• "Girl on a ball", 1905
• Harlequin Seated on a Red Bench, 1905
• "Girl in a shirt", 1905
• "Family of comedians", 1905
• "Portrait of Gertrude Stein", 1906
• Girls of Avignon, 1907
• "Young lady", 1909
• "Mother and child", 1922
• "Guernica", 1937
• "Weeping Woman", 1937
• Francoise, Claude and Paloma, 1951
• "Man and woman with a bouquet", 1970
• "Hugs", 1970
• "Two", 1973

The most famous and influential artist of the 20th century, the pioneer of the Cubist genre and Spanish expatriate, Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881.

Picasso's parents

Perhaps the most famous artist, whose ridiculously long name has become a household name, was born in October 1881 in the city of Malaga, Spain. There were three children in the family - the boy Pablo and his sisters Lola and Concepción. Pablo's father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, worked as a professor at the School of Fine Arts. Very little is known about Picasso's mother: Donna Maria was a simple woman. However, Picasso himself often mentioned her in his interviews. For example, he recalled that his mother, discovering his extraordinary talent for knitting, uttered the words that he remembered for a lifetime: "Son, if you go to the soldiers, you will become a general. If you go to the monastery, you will return from there as a Pope." Nevertheless, as the artist ironically noted, "I decided to become an artist and became Pablo Picasso."

© Sputnik / Sergey Pyatakov

Reproduction of the painting "Girl on the Ball" by Pablo Picasso

Childhood Picasso

Despite the fact that Picasso's school performance left much to be desired, he demonstrated unique skills in drawing, and at the age of 13 he could already compete with his father. José often locked him in a room with white walls and bars as a punishment for his poor studies. With his usual irony, Picasso later said that sitting in a cage gave him great pleasure: "I always carried a notebook and a pencil into the cell. I sat on the bench and drew. I could sit there forever, sit and draw."

The beginning of the creative path

The future art legend first made her claim to genius when the Picasso family moved to Barcelona. At the age of 16, he entered the Royal Academy of St. Fernand. The examiners were shocked when Pablo passed the entrance tests, designed for a whole month, in a day. But soon the teenager became disillusioned with the local education system, which, in his opinion, "was too fixated on the classics." Picasso began skipping classes and wandering the streets of Barcelona, ​​sketching buildings along the way. In his free time, he met with the bohemia of Barcelona. At that time, all famous artists gathered in the Four Cats cafe, where Picasso became a regular. His inimitable charisma earned him a wide circle of connections, and already in 1901 he organized the first exhibition of his paintings.

© Sputnik / V. Gromov

Reproduction of painting by P. Picasso "Bottle of Pernod (table in a cafe)"

Cubism, blue and pink periods of Picasso

The stretch between 1901 and 1904 is known as Picasso's blue period. The works of Pablo Picasso of those times were dominated by gloomy blue tones, and melancholy themes that accurately reflected his state of mind - the artist was in a severe depression, which signed his creative impulses. This period was marked by two outstanding paintings The Old Guitarist (1903) and Life (1903).

Reproduction of Pablo Picasso's painting "The Beggar with a Boy"

In the second half of 1904, a radical change in the paradigm of his work takes place. The paintings of the pink period are filled with pink and red colors, and the colors in general are much softer, thinner and more delicate. The archetype of the rose period is the painting La famille de saltimbanques (1905).

Picasso has been working in the Cubist genre since 1907. This direction is distinguished by the use of geometric shapes that break up real objects into primitive figures. "Avignon girls" - the first significant work of the cubic period of Picasso. On this canvas, the faces of the people depicted are visible both in profile and in front. In the future, Picasso adhered to just such an approach, continuing to split the world around him into separate atoms.

© Sputnik / A. Sverdlov

Painting "Three Women" by artist P. Picasso

Picasso and women

Picasso was not only an outstanding artist, but also a fairly well-known Don Juan. He was married twice, but had countless connections with women of all levels and morals. Picasso himself summarized his attitude towards the female sex as follows: "Women are machines for suffering. I divide women into two types: mistresses and rags for wiping feet." It is not known whether Picasso's open contempt for the fair sex is due to the fact that two of the seven most important women of the artist committed suicide, and the third died in the fourth year of marriage.

The indisputable fact remains that Picasso was not attached to any of the dozens or perhaps hundreds of mistresses and wives, but actively used them, including financially. Among his legal wives was the ambitious Soviet dancer Olga Khokhlova. Marriage to an influential woman did not prevent him from starting relationships on the side. So, Picasso met his young mistress Dora Maar in a bar, when she chopped her fingers into a bloody mess, trying to get into the gaps between her fingers with a knife. This deeply impressed Picasso, and he lived with Dora for several more years in secret from Khokhlova.

© Sputnik / Alexey Sverdlov

Reproduction of Pablo Picasso's "Date"

Mental Disorders Picasso

Throughout his life and even after his death, Picasso was credited with a whole bunch of mental illnesses. However, you don't have to be a psychiatrist to do this. Picasso's overly inflated self-esteem, a sense of absolute superiority and uniqueness, and extreme egocentrism meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder described in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) fourth edition. The schizophrenic status of Picasso is subject to serious doubts from the medical community, since it is not possible to diagnose such a complex disease from the pictures, but it is reliably known that Picasso suffered from a severe form of dyslexia - a violation of the ability to read and write while maintaining normal intelligence.

Picasso's "Women of Algiers" is the most expensive painting ever to come up for auction. In 2015, it was purchased for $179 million.

Picasso hated to drive for fear of hurting his hands. His luxurious Hispano-Suiza limousine has always been driven by a personal driver.

Picasso had an affair with Coco Chanel. As Mademoiselle Chanel recalled, "Picasso was the only man in the second millennium who turned me on." However, Picasso himself was afraid of her, and often complained that Coco was too famous and rebellious.

There are legends about Picasso's narcissism and astronomical self-esteem. However, some rumors are not true at all. The legendary artist once said to a friend, "God is also an artist... just like me. I am God."

Olga suffered endlessly from loneliness and despair. Not only did her husband leave her - he also disliked their son ... In fact, Picasso could not forgive Paulo for the fact that he turned out to be a man completely devoid of any talent.

Without any doubt, Paulo caused Picasso a lot of trouble, but he was sincerely attached to his father, unlike other children who prudently try to please their rich fathers.

Françoise Gilot describes him thus:

“The first time I saw Paulo was in a large photograph that hung in a long room on the Rue de la Grande Augustins, where Sabartes worked. I liked his direct, open gaze, which presented him in a different light than the trouble he sometimes got into and Pablo's angry reactions to them. Whenever I asked Pablo about his son, he angrily replied that Paulo was a quitter, completely devoid of ambition, unable to find a decent job, and showered him with other reproaches with which the bourgeois often reward unhurried adult sons to take up the business. Then he sharply attacked Olga, Paulo's mother, letting me know that with such a heredity, she could not get any sense out of her.

Paulo spent the entire war in Switzerland and returned to Paris only after his release. He did not have any work, and often had to humiliate himself in front of his father, begging for money. And it took a lot of money.

Once (it was in June 1946) Paulo looked into his father's workshop. This twenty-five-year-old young man looked, according to Francoise Gilot, as follows:

"He was over six feet tall, red-haired, not at all Spaniard-like, and carried a casual, affable manner, confirming the impression I had of him from the photograph."

Picasso introduced his son to Francoise and said that she now lives here. Paulo seemed pleased with this, spoke in a friendly manner, and then withdrew from Picasso. They talked about something for a long time. After that, Paulo left as suddenly as he appeared, rushing off on his favorite motorcycle back to Switzerland.

Then he came more than once and often lived with his father for a long time.

Françoise Gilot assures us:

"He gave his father a lot of worries in the process of growing up - sometimes it seemed that this process was too long - but in all his behavior it was not hidden self-interest that was clearly visible, but sincere, direct affection for Pablo."

Perhaps Paulo was direct. But he was not attached to Picasso. Or rather, he was, but he was tied only by constant material dependence, artificially supported by a wealthy artist. In any case, Paulo's daughter characterizes his relationship with Picasso in a completely different way:

“He reigns over the father and reduced him to a beggarly and servile state. He's the cause of my mother's mental breakdown. Pablito and I depend on his whims. He has subjugated us all to his unquenchable thirst to command. He uses us and deceives us. The feeling of his own genius, in which he was convinced by admirers of his art, made him seriously believe that his virtues are such that they allow him to rise above humanity. Manipulator, despot, destroyer, vampire."

And as for the immediacy of Paulo, it manifested itself in different ways. For example, one evening, having gone around all the bars of Juan-les-Pins, he and his friend brought two girls of "easy virtue" to the restaurant "At Marseilles". As a result, they scared both of them half to death, the girls began to scream, and the case ended with the intervention of the local police commissioner.

He, of course, told Picasso about everything, and his father became gloomier than a cloud.

Bring Paulo here, he said.

When the young man arrived, Picasso attacked him:

Worthless creature! Last night you behaved like the last creature!

But even this was not enough for him, and he continued:

Offspring of the White Guard! I have the most disgusting son in the world! Anarchist! Plus, you're spending too much money! What are you good for?!

When Paulo Picasso got older, he married Emilienne Lott. About this marriage, Marina Picasso, daughter of Paulo, says this:

“One fine day, my father and mother, in the presence of the mayor, expressed a desire to unite their destinies forever. Answering “yes”, both swore love and fidelity to each other and made a vow to surround their children with tenderness, support and patronage.

But neither me nor Pablito was destined for such a fate. Paulo Picasso and Emilienne Lott, who was so proud to be called Madame Picasso, separated when I was six months old and my brother was less than two years old. Their break was inevitable. Neither mother nor father had the talent to be happy themselves and give happiness to us.

Recall that Pablito was born from this marriage on May 5, 1949, and Marina on November 14, 1950.

Marina Picasso tells us the following about her mother:

“My mother always thought that being Picasso's daughter-in-law was a divine right. She never thought about the future, for us, like her, the good arrangement of the stars made Picasso.

Picasso became a special companion throughout her life. She looked only at him, thought with an eye on him, talked only about him: with merchants, just with passers-by on the streets, often even with strangers. "I'm Picasso's daughter-in-law."

Something like a trophy, an exemption to bypass the law, an excuse for the manifestation of any eccentricity.

I remember how ashamed I was when one summer she went to the beach in a silver or gold bikini, hugging a kid fourteen years her junior, I remember the feeling of humiliation when I saw her at the parents' meeting at school in a miniskirt in the company of a sucker hardly older than me, I remember the efforts that I had to put in to force myself to call her Mien - a diminutive of Emilienne - because it was young and in the American style, her fear, as soon as she opened her mouth, and painful awkwardness, when she talked to someone about the painting of Picasso, she never looked not only in the catalog, but even in a small brochure with reproductions of my grandfather.

Her speeches varied depending on who was listening to her. Speaking to those she barely knew, she put Picasso on a pedestal: “My father-in-law is a genius. I admire him, but he really appreciates me, that's for sure. To people closer to her, she spoke without ceremony about all the difficulties: “Just imagine that with all his wealth, this brat leaves us without a single penny.”

People laughed. People always laugh when others are in trouble.

I don’t remember my mother ever telling us stories like Little Red Riding Hood or taking us on a carousel ride. But I know one thing - despite all her pathologies, she was the only one we could count on. No one needed us in this family, except for her. Despite her megalomania and psychopathy, she brought us her warmth, maternal smell, voice.

And yet, in May 1950, Paulo Picasso and Emilienne Lott divorced.

Then Paulo was married to Christina Poplen, about whom Marina Picasso speaks like this:

“I remember her very vaguely. Perhaps only that she was very worried, as if not to quarrel with dad. She was quiet, of course, without any feelings for us, but she let us play with children from neighboring farms [...] We collected eggs in the hen house, milked the cows, drank their foamy milk. I liked the warm smells of the barn, freshly cut hay. I could touch everything with my hands: delve into the mud, in the straw, stroke the croup of a heifer or a bull. I had a feeling that for me there is nothing dirty here. Life was serene, and the father was full of joy. He laughed, it was amusing for him to see our independence, he was also pleased that he could feel like himself. There was no grandfather here with his trap.

It never crossed Christine's mind to idealize my father. She accepted him for who he was, good and bad. It never even crossed her mind to try to seduce Picasso. Of course, the yoke around my father's neck had driven her into despair more than once, but she knew very well that there was nothing she could do about it. She was one of those women who, once they fell in love with a man, accepted everything in him.

From this marriage in September 1959 they had a son - Bernard Picasso.

Paulo Picasso's life was full of humiliation. According to his daughter, one day he picked them up with Pablito to visit their grandfather in Vallauris. It was “an official visit to grandfather, who kindly agreed to receive his son and grandchildren”, it was agreed in advance, and it was impossible to be late. But the gates of the villa were tightly locked. Paulo started calling. For a long time no one answered, and then a displeased voice was heard from the intercom:

Who's there?

As if they did not know who came and why ...

It's Paulo! - forced to explain the son of the Great Picasso. He seems to be justified.

The electric lock clicked viciously, and the son and grandchildren walked slowly along the gravel path lined with magnificent cypresses.

Marina Picasso describes her impressions of such visits as follows:

“Our presence disturbed Picasso's peace, prevented him from [...]

There were also such visits when Pablito and I did not dare to utter a word, fearing that we would be noticed. This usually happened when my father was forced to endure grandfather’s reproaches with us: “You are not able to raise them”, “They need a father with a sense of responsibility ...”

These sermons of the tyrant seemed humiliating to me, and the way my father behaved in front of his tormentor aroused pity for him.

This time they quietly entered the room where Picasso received rare guests. He looked at them over his glasses and smiled faintly.

So, how are you doing in school? he asked Pablito.

And immediately, without bothering to listen to the answer, he asked the following question:

How are you, Marina?

She did not have time to open her mouth, as the following question followed:

Are you leaving for holidays?

He "strung" question after question without even looking at his grandchildren. He didn't give a damn about their progress in school, their vacations and everything else. His son's affairs interested him exactly to the same extent.

Paulo was not happy. Happy people don't take drugs or drink. In fact, he suffered greatly due to the fact that his father did not perceive him at all. Rather, he perceived it, but as an empty place. In 1954, after severe pneumonia, he was on the verge of death. The doctor sent Picasso a telegram asking him to urgently come to Cannes. There was no answer.

Responding to his father's endless reproaches, Paulo always said that he could drive a motorcycle perfectly. He even took part in a motorcycle race that started from Monte Carlo, and in competition with professional racers came to the finish line second. But this achievement of his son did not make any impression on Picasso.

Françoise Gilot writes:

“I think Paulo would have achieved a lot if his mother had not been held back. He had plenty of intelligence and a sense of humor."

Of course, she said this from the words of Picasso, and he blamed all the problems of his son on Olga. In fact, the relationship between mother and son was good, and no one was holding back. When Paulo was in the hospital, Olga, already partially paralyzed by that time and lying with cancer in one of the Cannes hospitals, became worse. Paulo was unable to move and was very worried, realizing that he could not be near his mother, and she was dying alone.

He himself will outlive Olga by twenty years, but he will die ten years younger than her. However, this will be discussed later.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso is one of the most notable figures who had a huge impact on the art of the 20th century. During his long creative career, which lasted more than 75 years, he created thousands of creations, including not only paintings, but also engravings, scenography, ceramics, mosaics and numerous sculptures made using a variety of materials. He was one of the most revolutionary artists in the history of Western painting. Picasso created and developed in his element with incredible vitality, at an accelerated pace, characteristic of a fast-paced age. Each direction of his activity was the embodiment of a radically new idea. One gets the feeling that in one fate of the creator, several artistic lives fit at once. The Spanish artist was a central figure in the development of cubism, laid the foundation for the concept of abstract art.

Childhood

Pablo appeared on October 25, 1881 in the Andalusian region of southern Spain. After the birth, the midwife decided that the baby was dead, as the birth was long and difficult. His uncle, a doctor named Salvador, literally saved the newborn by expelling smoke from a cigar in the direction of the baby, who immediately reacted to the smell with a desperate roar. The full name received at baptism contains 23 words. He was named after various saints and relatives.

His father, José Ruiz Blasco, came from an ancient, wealthy family in northwestern Spain. He was a painter, taught at the school of fine arts founded by the Academy of Fine Arts and located in the building of San Telmo, an old Jesuit monastery, and served as a curator at the municipal museum. The School of Arts in Malaga has been operating since 1851. The artist owes his last name to his mother, Maria Picasso Lopez. He actively used it since 1901.

According to tradition, one of the first words spoken was "piz", short for "lápiz", which means "pencil". Pablo loved to draw since childhood. The father completely controlled the art education of his son. He gave him lessons himself and sent him at the age of five to the school where he worked. Being the son of an academic painter and inspired by his work, Pablo began to create from an early age. As a child, his father often took him to bullfights, and one of his early paintings contained a bullfighting scene.

In 1891, his father received a teaching position at an institute in A Coruña, and in 1892 Pablo entered the same educational institution as a student. For three years he received a classical art education. Under the academic guidance of his father, he developed his artistic talent at an extraordinary rate.

years of education

In January 1895, when Picasso was a teenager, his younger sister Conchita died of diphtheria. This tragic event affected the plans of the family. By the same period, Juan was accepted as a teacher at the art academy in La Longe, and the family moved. His father contributed to Pablo's independence by renting a studio for him in Barcelona.

A year later, he was accepted as a student at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. He demonstrated his remarkable ability by completing in one day the entrance examination, which was allotted a whole month, despite being younger than officially required for training. With the financial help of his relatives, Pablo went to study in Madrid at the end of 1897. However, Pablo was bored with the classical techniques of the art school. He did not want to paint like the artists of the past, but wanted to create something new. Returning in 1900 to Barcelona, ​​he often visited the famous cafe, focused on meetings of the intelligentsia and artists "Four Cats". His visit to Horta de Ebro between 1898 and 1899 and his association with a café group in 1899 were crucial to early artistic development. It was in Barcelona that he moved away from the traditional classical methods, leaning towards an experimental and innovative approach to painting. In this literary and artistic environment, many adherents of modern French art from France, as well as Catalan traditional and folk art, gathered. There is a myth that the father was so impressed with his son's abilities that in 1894 he swore off drawing himself, but in fact, José continued to paint until his death. Picasso's relationship with his parents became strained when he stopped his studies. In a cafe, he became friends with the young Catalan painter Carlos Casajemas, with whom he later moved to France.

In 1900, the first exhibition of Picasso took place in Barcelona, ​​and in the autumn he went to Paris.

Parisian period

At the turn of the twentieth century, Paris was the center of the international art world. For painters, it was the birthplace of the Impressionists, who depicted the world around them with brushstrokes or strokes of unmixed colors to create a sense of real reflected light. Although their work retained certain connections with the outside world, there were certain tendencies towards abstractionism. After leaving Spain, Picasso presented his painting "Last Moments" at the World Exhibition in Paris.

However, the trip to the capital of art was overshadowed. A friend of the artist became depressed because of an unhappy and painful love story with a dancer from the Moulin Rouge. They decided to spend their holidays in Picasso's hometown, but this was not to be. Carlos committed suicide by gunshot to the temple. Pablo was so crushed by this loss that it could not but affect his work. He paints several portraits of a friend in a coffin. Picasso is approaching the "blue period" of his work, during which melancholy and depression show through canvases abounding in blue tones. For the next four years, blue dominated his paintings. He painted people with elongated features. Some of his paintings from this period depicted the poor, beggars, sad and gloomy people.

Two outstanding examples of Picasso's "blue period" work:

• "Old Guitarist";
• "A beggar old man with a boy";
• "Life";
• "Woman with a bun of hair."

In 1902, two exhibitions of the artist were organized. Nevertheless, he lives and works practically destitute in Max Jakob's room. A love story with Fernanda Olivier, who was at first his model, helped out of a deep depression over the death of a close friend of Carlos Casajemas. He fell in love with a French woman and lived with her until 1912. The paintings began to fill with warmer colors, including shades of red, beige, orange. Art historians call this time in Pablo's life the "pink period". The plots presented images of happier scenes, among which there was a circus theme.

Picasso acquired a permanent Parisian studio in 1904. His studio soon became a meeting place for artists and writers of the city. Soon the circle of friends included the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Leo and Gertrude Stein, André Salmo, two agents: Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill.

From 1905 he became more and more interested in pictorial techniques. This interest seems to have been awakened by the late paintings of Paul Cezanne.

Between 1900 and 1906 he tried almost every major style of painting. At the same time, his own style changed with extraordinary speed. The Steins introduce him to Henri Matisse. The portrait of Gertrude Stein began a series of experiments in portrait abstraction, inspired by Iberian sculpture, whose exhibition Picasso visited at the Louvre in the spring of 1906.

Picasso and cubism

The Maidens of Avignon was Picasso's attempt to forget his past relationship. Executed in a new revolutionary manner, under the influence of the art of Cezanne and Negro, the painting became the founder of the nascent pictorial movement, of which Picasso is considered the parent.

Together with the painter and friend Georges Braque, in 1907 he began his pictorial experiments. Cubism was a new artistic concept of the artist, through which Pablo tried to challenge the generally accepted laws of copying nature. Objects are laid down on the canvas by cutting and breaking the objects to emphasize the two dimensions of the canvas.

Between 1907 and 1911, Picasso continued to decompose the visible world into smaller facets of monochrome planes. At the same time, his work became more and more abstract. The most striking examples, clearly illustrating the development of the direction, are the canvases: "Fruit Plate" (1909), "Portrait of Ambroise Vollard" (1910) and "Woman with a Guitar" (1911-12). In 1912, Picasso began to combine cubism and collage. It was during this period that he began using sand or plaster in his paint to give it texture. He also used colored paper, newspapers, and wallpaper to add extra dimension to his paintings.

Russian wife of Picasso

Picasso's collaboration with directors of ballet and theater productions Picasso began in 1916. Designed and realized sets and costumes for Diaghilev's ballets amazed the audience from 1917 to 1924. Thanks to his work with the Russian Ballet of Diaghilev, Pablo meets the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, who becomes his wife. They lived together for 18 years, during which their son Paulo was born in 1921. In the 1920s, the artist and his wife Olga continued to live in Paris, traveling frequently and spending their summers on the beach. Due to Picasso having an affair with a young Frenchwoman on the side, which led to pregnancy and the birth of an illegitimate child, the family broke up. The wife broke off relations and left for the south of France. The divorce did not happen, and Olga remained the artist's wife until the end of her days due to Pablo's unwillingness to comply with the terms of the marriage contract.

New achievements

In several stages, Picasso turned away from abstraction and saw the light of day a succession of paintings in a realistic and serenely beautiful classical style. One of the most famous works was The Woman in White. Written just two years after The Three Musicians, calm and not attracting too much attention to itself with outrageousness, once again demonstrated the ease with which he could express himself.

After a short appeal to classicism, the master became known for his surrealist works, which replaced cubism.

Between 1925 and the 1930s he was to some extent associated with the Surrealists, and from the autumn of 1931 he was especially interested in sculpture. In 1932, in connection with major exhibitions at the Georges Petit galleries in Paris and the Arts House in Zurich, Picasso's fame increased markedly. By 1936, the Spanish Civil War had a profound effect on Picasso, culminating in his most famous painting. "Guernica" is an allegorical condemnation of fascism, a powerful image depicting the realities of war and its consequences.

This work was commissioned by the government for the Spanish pavilion before the Paris World's Fair. It depicts the catastrophic destruction in the city during the civil uprising. The work was completed within six or seven weeks. Made entirely in black, white and gray, 25 feet wide and 11 feet high, the painting is the quintessence of the pain and suffering of the people from cruelty. Picasso applied the pictorial language of Cubism to a situation that emerged from social and political consciousness.

Political views of Picasso

Picasso publicly declared in 1947 that he was a communist. When asked about his motives, he stated: “When I was a boy in Spain, I was very poor and aware of how poor people live. I learned that the communists are focused on the needs of the poor. That's why I became a communist." After the death of Joseph Stalin, the French communists turned to the artist with a request to paint a party leader. His portrait caused a sensation in the leadership of the Communist Party. The Soviet government rejected his portrait.

Although Picasso was in exile from his native Spain after the 1939 victory of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, he gave more than eight hundred of his early works to Barcelona. But due to Franco's dislike, his name never appeared in the museum. Among the huge number of Picasso exhibitions that were held during the life of the artist, the most significant were those in New York and Paris.

In 1961, Pablo married Jacqueline Roque and they moved to Mougins. There Picasso continued his fruitful work, which did not stop until the end of his days. One of the last works was a self-portrait, made in pencil on paper, "Self-portrait standing face to face with death." He died a year later at the age of 91 in his thirty-five-room villa on the hill of Notre-Dame-de-Vie in Mougins on April 8, 1973.