Pablo Picasso

Posted October 14, 2007, 8:55 am
Credit Growing Bolder

Pablo Picasso
Born: Oct. 25, 1881
Died: April 8, 1973

Pablo Picasso is generally considered the most famous artist of the 20th century. He is best know as the co-founder, along with Georges Braque, of cubism.

His career was so long and prolific that experts divide his work into periods -- the Blue Period, the Rose Period, and his most famous contribution to modern art, Cubism.

After the Age of Seventy

• At age 74 (1955), had a major exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.
• At age 82 (1963), painted The Rape of the Sabines.
• At age 90 (1971), painted Young Bather and Sand Shovel.
• At age 91 (1973), was still creating paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics and sculpture until his death  at the age of 91.
  

Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time, these works were dismissed by many as "the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man". Only later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.

Quotes:

• "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
• "We don't grow older, we grow riper."
• "“My Mother said to me, If you become a soldier you’ll be a general, if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope. Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”"
  
• "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
• "Everything you can imagine is real."
• "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."
  

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