Special Exhibitions
Picasso: The Artist's Studio
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Special Exhibitions |
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Picasso: The Artist's Studio |
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Early Life and Training Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, a city on the southern coast of Spain, to a family of modest means. His father was a conservative artist who specialized in painting pigeons, but unable to make a living selling these pictures, he supported the family by teaching at a local art academy.Picasso began drawing as a child under his father’s guidance. At age eleven, he began attending his father’s classes and within a year was painting from live models. The family moved to Barcelona in 1895, after Picasso’s father accepted a teaching position at the municipal art academy there. Although only fourteen years old, Picasso soon enrolled in this academy, located on the top floor of the city’s commodities exchange building. It might be said that Picasso’s professional career began the following year, when he received a commission for a series of religious paintings for a local convent. In the fall of 1897, after receiving awards at regional and national salons for several large, academic paintings, Picasso entered the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. The following spring he became seriously ill and withdrew, concluding his formal art training at age sixteen. In 1899, he joined a circle of modernista artists, poets, and anarchists who frequented the bohemian cafés of Barcelona. This turn of events shattered family hopes that their talented offspring would pursue the career of a "respectable" academic painter. During this period of youthful rebellion, Picasso discovered Symbolism and other avant-garde movements by reading international art magazines and through older colleagues who had traveled abroad. His first solo exhibition, featuring a large modernista painting titled Last Moments, opened at the Barcelona artist’s café Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats) in February 1900. During his early years, Picasso often signed his paintings "Ruiz Picasso" in accordance with the Spanish custom of using the family name of both parents. (The father’s family name is considered the more important of the two and comes before the maternal family name.) Picasso continued this practice until about age twenty, when he dropped the "Ruiz" and retained only his mother’s family name, which is more unusual in Spain because of its Italian origin. Page 1 of 6 | On the next page: Blue and Rose Periods |
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