Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish, Don Quixote 1955 Lithograph. Signed and dated in the stone: 10.8.55.
Overall: 24 3/4 X 20 3/8 in.
Sight: 23 1/2 X 19 in.
#3846 .
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25th, 1881 in Málaga, Andalusia in southern Spain, to a middle-class family. His father was a naturalist painter who exposed Picasso to many artforms early on and provided him formal training starting at the age of seven. In 1895 Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria, after which the family moved to Barcelona. He was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts at 13, and lacked discipline but made many friendships that would affect him in later life. At 16 he was sent to Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, but he frequently skipped classes to observe art and architecture around the city, eventually falling out with his father for good. By 1897 his realism began to show a Symbolist influence, and his Modernist Period (1899-1900) soon followed, emulating the work of Rossetti, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edvard Munch combined with Old Masters like El Greco. In 1900 he traveled to Paris, where he made friends with the poet Max Jacob, who taught him French. His early work was burned to keep himself warm at night, and he spent half of 1901 in Madrid with his anarchist friend Francisco de Asis Soler publishing the Arte Joven magazine. Picasso’s Blue Period (1901-1904), characterized by somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, began when he returned to Paris for the latter half of that year. The Rose Period (1904-1906) is characterized by a lighter tone and style utilizing orange and pink colors and featuring many circus people, acrobats, and harlequins, which became a personal symbol for Picasso. During the period he became a favorite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein, whose patronage led him to meet Henri Matisse, a lifelong friend and rival. Picasso’s African Period (1907-1909) began when he first saw artifacts in the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro. The paintings from this period were considered shocking, but they were instrumental in developing formal ideas that led directly to his Cubist Period (1910-1919). In 1911 Picasso was arrested and questioned about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, and began an affair with Marcelle Humbert, also known as Eva Gouel. He was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915. Picasso spent World War I in France, where he was able to continue painting uninterrupted unlike his French comrades. Picasso’s work grew darker due to the War, and he had an affair with Gabrielle Lespinasse. He became involved with costume design for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with the troupe, in 1918. The two had a son, Paulo Picasso, who would grow up to be a motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Picasso’s brash bohemian lifestyle clashed with Khokhlova’s opulent high-society manner, and in 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began an affair with her, eventually having a daughter named Maya together. Picasso separated from Khokhlova but refused to divorce her to avoid losing half of his wealth, and the two remained legally married until her death in 1955. Between the Wars Picasso produced many works in the neoclassical style, as well as being pivotal in the Surrealist movement. The minotaur replaced the harlequin as the most common motif in his work, prominently visible in his 1937 magnum opus “Guernica,” painted to depict the German bombing of the city during the Spanish Civil War at the behest of Francisco Franco. The painting was sent to the Museum of Modern Art in New York when Franco won the war, where Picasso requested that it be kept until Spain was no longer under his rule. During World War II Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city, taking the photographer Dora Maar as his mistress. He did not exhibit during this time, and he was often harassed by the Gestapo. He wrote poetry and smuggled bronze in through the French Resistance to make casts, as well as completing two plays. In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso began a romantic relationship with Françoise Gilot, an art student 40 years his junior, with whom he had two children, Claude and Paloma. Her biography in 1964 detailed his abusive behavior and dealt a significant blow to his public image. By his 70s many of his paintings, ink drawings, and prints have as their theme an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model. Jacqueline Roque, who worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, met Picasso when he was making and painting ceramics and became his second wife in 1961, remaining with him for the rest of his life. His final years were spent acting in films, touring America, and simultaneously embracing and denigrating his status as an international celebrity, often painting in a childish and farcical style, simply to see how much people would pay for his work. When he died on April 8th, 1973 in Mougins, France, his name was synonymous with the first half of the 20th Century, a prolific and provocative figure who touched many lives, invented numerous art forms, and changed political and cultural standards and traditions towards art forever. He remains one of the most sought after artists in history, with work in thousands of museums and a lasting influence on nearly every art movement of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.
