Artists

Pablo Picasso, the master who was instrumental in the development of Cubism and Abstraction, was recognized as an artistic genius from an early age. After studying art in Barcelona and Madrid, he moved to Paris and settled in the artist quarter Montmartre, where he created the work of what is known as his Blue Period. As a twenty-five year old, after enduring relative poverty and hardship like other painters and sculptors in his neighborhood, Picasso enjoyed his first financial success through the patronage of dealer Ambroise Vollard. It was at this time that his melancholy, blue subjects turned to the members of the circus, and his palette became rosier, thus his Rose Period. Soon after, in 1906, Picasso and Matisse met. Although he did not have the same interest in the Fauvist's exploration of color and shape, the two would remain friends and rivals well into the future. Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907, one of his masterpieces, and a seminal painting of the twentieth century. The pivotal painting is a study in simplification of form and creative innovation of space. Today the Demoiselles d'Avignon is considered Picasso's decisive leap into the realm of Cubism, with its shifting and rebuilding of elements. Picasso and his good friend Georges Braque teamed up in 1911, and together created a new concept for painting, Analytic Cubism. The Second World War encroached upon Spain in 1939, and Picasso was alarmed and disturbed by the events. After the Nazi bombing of Guernica, Spain, Picasso painted the enormous black and white tribute to the traumas of war, Guernica. Aside from painting, Picasso was prolific in many other mediums, and in particular, his sculpture stands out in its use of found objects and assemblage. Few artists in the history of art have had such an impact as Picasso has, and certainly he considered the greatest artist of the twentieth century.