Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, a port city on the southern coast of Spain.
His birthplace is a house on the Plaza de la Merced, a square in the old center of the city. His family left Málaga when he was ten, and he spent most of his adult life in France.
He first came to Paris in 1900, then went back and forth from Barcelona, where his family lived, before settling in Paris for good in 1904. France remained his home until his death.
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Yet he never became French. In April 1940, months after war broke out with Germany, he applied for citizenship, though he already had two children born in the country. The request was turned down.
A police report that spring said he did not meet the requirements for naturalization and "must be considered as a suspect from a national perspective." He never applied again.
The roots of that verdict went back to his early years in Paris, and to a police file opened when he was nineteen.
The French police file on Picasso
In June 1901, during his second stay in Paris, Picasso showed his paintings at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard, the art dealer who sold Cézanne…
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