Pablo Picasso biography

However, he again became frustrated with his school's singular focus on classical subjects and techniques. During this time, he wrote to a friend: "They just go on and on about the same old stuff: Velázquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture." Once again, Picasso began skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars and prostitutes,

among other things.

In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats ("The Four Cats"). Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break from the classical methods in which he had been trained, and began what would become a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

Blue Period: 'Blue Nude,' 'La Vie' and Other Works

At the turn of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso moved to Paris, France—the cultural center of European art—to open his own studio. Art critics and historians typically break Picasso's adult career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is called his "Blue Period," after the color that dominated nearly all of Picasso's paintings over these years. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend, Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish, almost exclusively in shades of blue and green. Picasso's most famous paintings from the Blue Period include "Blue Nude," "La Vie" and "The Old Guitarist," all three of which were completed in 1903.

In contemplation of Picasso and his Blue Period, Symbolist writer and critic Charles Morice once asked, "Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?"

Rose Period: 'Gertrude Stein,' 'Two Nudes' and More

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome the depression that had previously debilitated him. Not only was he madly in love with a beautiful model, Fernande Olivier, he was newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The artistic manifestation of Picasso's improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors—including beiges, pinks and reds—in what is known as his "Rose Period" (1904-06). His most famous paintings from these years include "Family at Saltimbanques" (1905), "Gertrude Stein" (1905-06) and "Two Nudes" (1906).

Break into Cubism

In 1907, Pablo Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," a chilling depiction of five nude prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. Today, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and his friend and fellow painter, Georges Braque.

In Cubist paintings, objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting them from multiple, simultaneous viewpoints in order to create physics-defying, collage-like effects.