Pablo Picasso: 1881-1973: Artist

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was born in Málaga, in Spain's Andalusia province, on October 25, 1881. Picasso was his mother's last name, but when Pablo Ruiz became active as an independent artist he began to experiment with many different forms of signing his name and finally dropped all traces of "Ruiz." He was the oldest child and only son of Don José Ruiz Blasco, an art teacher and the curator of the local art museum who raised pigeons on the side. Picasso learned to draw so early that he could not remember having done so, although he remembered the birth of a sister when he was three. His first word is said to have been "lápiz"—Spanish for "pencil."

Picasso's talent was nurtured by his father as the latter moved to teaching positions in Corunna and Barcelona, and after enrolling in the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona a restless Picasso exhibited some large paintings, one of which, "Science and Charity," won two awards. That positive event combined with a negative one—trauma that followed the death of his youngest sister from diphtheria—propelled Picasso toward an artistic career. At this point Picasso was a well-trained young artist with only occasional flashes of originality. Picasso studied briefly at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, and in 1900, a few days before his 19th birthday, Picasso arrived in Paris.

There, in the city's arts-oriented Montmartre district, he soaked up the modernist trends that were sweeping the art world. The outlandishly colorful and violently mood-suffused canvases of Vincent Van Gogh impressed him, and he began to express an often bleak worldview (intensified when a close friend committed suicide) through pervasive use of the color blue. The works of what would be called Picasso's Blue Period failed to sell well at first, but Picasso found several sympathetic dealers and experienced more financial success than many other young artists. Part of his success was due to his incredible industriousness and productivity; the French art critic François Charles, according to Picasso biographer Arianna Huffington, told Picasso "for his own good no longer to do a painting a day," but Picasso maintained that breakneck speed over much of his long life.