Picasso

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 12th grade January 2002

download word file, 5 pages 3.0

Considered by many to be the greatest artist of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso was definitely was the most prolific, creating over 20,000 works of art. He was the most influential inspiring almost every artist that has seen his works. Picasso also created more styles than any other artist did. He created at least six different styles by being an inventor of forms, an innovator of styles and techniques, and a master of various media. For Picasso it all began when he was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881, as the son of an art professor at the local academy. He knew his calling at a young age. He started painting at the age of 10. At age 11 he began attending his father's classes and was painting live models a year later. The family moved to Barcelona when his father accepted a teaching position at the school of fine arts in 1895.

Picasso scored highly on the entrance examinations and was soon enrolled. Picasso's formal art training ended at the age of 16 when he withdrew from classes at the Royal Academy at San Fernando in Madrid after becoming seriously ill.

In 1901 following the suicide of his friend Carles Casagemas, Picasso abandoned Post Impressionist styles and began his blue period. This period concentrated on human misery and desolation portraying blind figures, beggars, alcoholics, prostitutes, and other social outcasts. The figures were withdrawn in seriously simplified and elongated bodies that are reminiscent of El Greco. Reduced to poverty himself by this time, Picasso moved back to Barcelona to live with his parents where he painted La Vie, the epitome of the blue period In 1904 Picasso returned to Paris where he met Fernande Olivier, the first long-term engagement, and also one of the first of many companions to influence...