Pablo Picasso is probably the best known of all modern visual artists. When modern art is mentioned in front of laics, Picasso’s name almost inevitably comes up, as a synonym of the 20^th century art.

Picasso was born on 25^th October  1881, in Málaga in Spain. His father, José Ruiz Blasco, was an academic painter, so young Pablo was exposed to art very early in life. Inevitably, he decided to follow his father’s steps, and after the family had moved to Barcelona, he entered the academy of fine arts La Lonia. His first exhibition came at the very young age of 19, in 1900, still in Barcelona. Picasso however yearned to develop his art in what was perceived as the cultural capitol of the world, so after this he made several prolonged visits of Paris, eventually settling there in 1904.

To think that Picasso would have congregated only with the other visual artists, as many of his colleagues have, would be a serious mistake. His goals were loftier and his horizons wider. In Paris his circle of friends soon included many important figures in the literary world, such as the poets Guillaume Apollinaire (who brought him together with the other founder of Cubism, Georges Braque) and Paul Eluard, father of the theatre of the absurd Alfred Jarry, and other prominent Surrealists. Also important personalities from the world of theatre, ballet, music, etc., such as the composer Igor Stravinsky. From the time of his arrival to Paris, Picasso went through several periods of painting style, the best known being the Blue Period (from about 1901), the Rose Period (1905) and, of course the Cubistic Period, which began with the famous work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, painted in 1907. Cubism can further be divided into two distinct phases, the Analytic (c. 1908-11) and the Synthetic (after 1912).

By about 1916 Picasso became much absorbed in designs for theatrical and ballet productions, which meant that he gradually moved away from Cubism, but never abandoned it completely. His later works, which he produced prolifically for the next half a century, nevertheless mainly fall into the sphere of neoclassicism. He was always producing large numbers of drawings, and from the 1930 he became much interested in sculpture. The painting Guernica, which Picasso made in 1937, was his reaction on the atrocities that happened during the Spanish Civil War, and became also very famous. 

From about the mid 1940s, Picasso seemingly became quite severely influenced (perhaps the word should be "infected") by the Communist doctrine, as did many of his contemporaries from the intellectual circles. Thus to those people who lived in one of the satellite countries of what was then the Soviet Union, as did the author of this blog, Picasso was not exactly an endearing character. His fame and his political leanings had made him an ideal tool of the totalitarian regime's propaganda. One sometimes wonders how much was the artist aware of this, and how much he cared.

For the last three decades of his long life Picasso lived mostly in south of France. He died on 8^th April, 1973, aged 91.  

Our selection of Picasso's works has been arranged in chronological order, starting with the earliest paintings, and covers more than three quarters of a century of the artist's long working life.