Pablo Picasso, one of the best-known artists in the world, pictured in 1955.
Pablo Picasso achieved immense success during his lifetime with his daring, innovative, and technically brilliant artwork. Known for co-founding the Cubist movement, Picasso also made major contributions to several other artistic movements and pioneered a number of artistic techniques, including collage.
More than half a century since his death, Picasso remains one of the most popular artists on the market today. Incredibly prolific throughout his long life, Picasso worked in a number of mediums, including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Prints dominate his market and account for 56% of his work sold at auction, usually fetching between £1,000 and £5,000.
Part of Picasso’s enduring appeal is the idea of him as the quintessential bohemian artist, and tales of his magnetic, charismatic, and sometimes cruel personality have endured alongside his art. Therefore, below is a list of seven things you might not have known about Picasso.
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He Showed Talent From A Young Age
Picasso’s mother claimed that his first word was “piz”, a shortened version of lápiz, meaning pencil in Spanish. Picasso’s father was an art teacher, and he gave his son formal artistic training from the age of seven. There is a story – though its truth is disputed – that after watching his teenage son draw, Picasso’s father vowed to give up painting, believing that his child had surpassed his own talent.
Whether the story is true or not, Picasso certainly displayed innate artistic talent all his life. Le Repas Frugal, for instance, was created when he was only 23 years old, yet it remains among his most sought-after prints in today’s market.
His Most Expensive Print Sold For £5 million
Le Repas Frugal is a hauntingly beautiful print which displays considerable technical skill. Yet, remarkably, it was only the second time Picasso had tried his hand at printmaking, he had little instruction (if any) in the process, and he was just 23 years old when he created it.
Between 1904 and 1905, a small number of prints were produced from the plate, and these are extremely sought-after. Ambroise Vollard, the French art dealer who had a long association with Picasso, later bought the plate and steel-faced it to print a larger edition, though the results lack much of the detail and depth of the originals. One original print was sold by Christie’s in March 2022 for £5 million, doubling its top estimate, and setting a new record for the artist.
Le Repas Frugal sold by Christie’s in 2022
He Had His First Solo Show At 19
Ambroise Vollard championed several then-unknown artists in the late 19th and early 20th century, including Cézanne, Renoir, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, so he was well-placed to recognise Picasso’s talent. Vollard gave the young artist his first solo show in 1901, when Picasso was just 19 years old, and he later commissioned La Suite Vollard, a stunning series of 100 prints created by Picasso between 1930 and 1937. Vollard remained a central figure in the artist’s life until his own death in a car crash in 1939, the same year that the La Suite Vollard plates were finally published.
He Had A Complex Personal Life
Picasso apparently once said, “For me there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats.” The artist’s muses and lovers populate a huge proportion of his artwork, whether as direct portraits (such as in Le Repas Frugal), symbolic references (like in La Minotauromachie), or some combination of the two (La Femme Qui Pleure I is often thought to be an amalgamation of his different lovers).
Picasso was married twice and serially unfaithful, frequently engaging in affairs with women several decades younger than him, his charisma and magnetic charm often proving irresistible. This tended to cause chaos in the artist’s personal life, and people closely involved with him did not usually emerge from the experience unscathed; one of his granddaughter’s claimed he “submitted [women] to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them, ingested them, and crushed them onto his canvas.”
He Wrote Poetry
During one particularly tumultuous year (remembered by the artist as “the worst period of my life”), Picasso virtually stopped making art. He had always been intensely prolific, but in 1935, he produced very little, and instead, he devoted himself mostly to writing poetry. One notable piece of art from this year, though, is La Minotauromachie, a bizarre and surreal piece full of symbolism and hidden meaning, which was sold for over £1.5 million by Christie’s in May 2016.
Picasso’s Poetry
His Work Can Be Categorised Into Periods
Picasso’s career spanned more than seven decades, and during that time, he produced an extraordinary amount of work in a number of different styles. Though the categorisation of his later work has been extensively debated, generally, it’s accepted that his early career can be divided into different periods, including the Blue Period, the Rose Period, and the African-influenced Period. Within these categorisations, many of the pieces share similar characteristics; some of the artist’s work also straddles different periods, including Le Repas Frugal, which is often considered as a bridge between the Blue Period and the Rose Period.
He Worked Vigorously Until The End
Picasso’s later years were characterised by an engulfing creative fervour. During this time, he produced some of his best, most innovative, and most sought-after work, presumably spurred on by his own impending mortality. One result of this was a remarkable series called Séries 347, a collection of 347 prints created in just seven months during 1968. This burst of artistic activity proved the artist’s belief that “It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”
