Pablo Picasso: The Complete Story
Pablo Picasso (1881 to 1973) was the Spanish artist who broke painting open and rebuilt it, the most famous and most prolific artist of the twentieth century, and one of its most troubling men.
He invented Cubism, painted the century's greatest protest against war, made some fifty thousand works, died a multimillionaire at 91, and left behind a trail of broken women and a family at war over his fortune.
Genius and monster live in the same story. Here is the whole of it.
Picasso in sixty seconds
Lived: 1881 to 1973, from Malaga to the South of France, dead at 91.
Invented: Cubism, with Georges Braque.
Greatest work: Guernica, his scream against war.
Output: around fifty thousand works, a world record.
The shadow: his cruelty toward the women in his life.
The prodigy from Malaga
Picasso was born in Malaga, in southern Spain, in 1881. His father was a painter and drawing teacher who spotted the boy's gift early.
The talent was almost unfair. He could draw like a master as a teenager. He later said it took him a few years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. Where he came from is here: where Pablo Picasso was born. His odd habits and his 23 word full name are among the surprising facts about Picasso. He was endlessly quotable too: his famous quotes.
The Blue Period and a friend's death
In 1901 a close friend, Carlos Casagemas, shot himself over a failed love affair. It shattered the young Picasso.
Out of that grief came his Blue Period, years of paintings drowned in cold blue: beggars, the blind, the poor and the lonely. His art has always run on his life, and it started with a death..
He blew up how we see
In 1907 Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, five angular women with faces like African masks. It was so jarring even his friends recoiled.
With Georges Braque he pushed it into Cubism, shattering objects into facets and showing several viewpoints at once. It was the biggest rupture in Western art since the Renaissance, and it grew partly out of his charged way of painting the nude. Why all this made him a legend is here: why Picasso is famous.
Guernica
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German planes flew for Franco and bombed the Basque town of Guernica, killing civilians in an afternoon.
Picasso answered with a vast black and grey mural of screaming horses, a dead child and a broken figure. Guernica became the most powerful antiwar painting ever made. He refused to let it go to Spain while Franco lived. It only arrived in Madrid in 1981, after both men were dead..
The women he consumed
Picasso's private life is the hardest part of his story.
Across his life there were two wives and a string of mistresses, many far younger than him, and he treated most of them with stunning cruelty. Two ended their own lives. He once said women were either goddesses or doormats. The full reckoning is here: how Picasso destroyed the six women who loved him.
A communist and a millionaire
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party and stayed a member until he died.
He drew the famous Dove of Peace and gave money to the cause, even as he lived in villas and grew enormously rich from his own work. He was one of many artists who tied their art to the radical left, told in 13 famous left wing artists.
Fifty thousand works
Picasso almost never stopped. Paintings, sculptures, ceramics, prints, drawings: the total runs to roughly fifty thousand pieces.
It made him the most prolific artist on record and, by the end, fabulously wealthy. Just how much he made is here: how many paintings Picasso made.
Death and the war over his fortune
Picasso died in 1973 at his home in the South of France, aged 91.
He left no will and a colossal estate, and the fight over it tore the family apart, trailed by more tragedy among those he left behind. The full story of his end is here: how Pablo Picasso died.
Common questions about Picasso
What is Picasso famous for? Inventing Cubism and painting Guernica.
Where was he born? Malaga, in southern Spain, in 1881.
How did he die? Heart failure in 1973, at 91, in the South of France.
How many works did he make? Around fifty thousand.
Was he a good man? A genius, but cruel to the women in his life.
Was Picasso a communist? Yes. He joined the French Communist Party in 1944 and stayed a member for the rest of his life.
How many wives and children did he have? Two wives, and four children by three different women.
How tall was Picasso? Short, around 1.63 meters, about five foot four.
Did Picasso win any awards? Yes, including the Soviet Lenin Peace Prize, which he received twice.
Did Picasso have pets? Yes, famously a dachshund named Lump, plus an owl and a goat.
Where is Picasso buried? At his chateau of Vauvenargues, in the South of France.
The genius and the monster
Picasso is the hardest kind of artist to love, because the same restless force that remade painting also wrecked the people closest to him.
We do not get to keep one without the other. He changed how the whole world sees, and he hurt almost everyone who loved him, and both of those are true at once.
Go deeper:
If Picasso pulled you in, you’ll also love these: