“My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
Maybe you thought he was a bit of a narcissistic guy, but he knows his stuff. During his childhood, Picasso became well-acquainted with the art of painting realistically. As he grew from a child to an adolescent, his work began to change. Once an adult, Picasso began experimenting with different kinds of painting. Most of the paintings produced in his adulthood were known as "cubist" paintings. In other words, Picasso painted and perfected the art of abstract.
Many of his works are first attempts at the new style. At the beginning of the 20th century, Picasso made his first trip to Paris, the art capitol of Europe at the time. It was there that he met Max Jacob, a man who taught him the language and later became his roommate. These were desperate times for Picasso. Working as a true starving artist, he slept during most of the day and did all of his painting at night.
During the outbreak of World War I, Picasso turned even more of his attention to art and lived a lifestyle similar to that of a "Bohemian." At this time he befriended several officers, commanders, and composers, including Igor Stravinsky whom he took many opportunities to sketch. This is his most famous sketch of Stravinsky.
(Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, 1920)
In his later years, Picasso became increasingly aware of his old age and level of attractiveness to young women. Over the course of many years he had earned a reputation of somewhat of a gigolo, dating and courting younger women until they no longer found him attractive. Most of his paintings at this point reflected a sense of how he felt: an old, short dwarf standing next to a lustrous young woman. Picasso died in 1973 following a dinner party where his last words were, "Drink to me, drink to my health. You know I can't drink anymore."
(Self Portrait, 1906)
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