Pablo Picasso the secret of his success/ Pablo Picasso el Secreto​ de su exito

By Catalina Donoso Article in English/ Articulo en Español.

It was a Sunday afternoon, that I took my little brother through the narrow streets of Barcelona in the middle of the Barrio Gotico, we were on our way to the Pablo Picasso Museum. My brother was only 9 years old the same age as Pablo when he was taking his first steps to becoming a painter. At the end of the visit, my brother whispered to my ears a few words «After the blue period he truly changed the way he saw life». A month of celebrating the memorial of his birthday we understand what immortality means, to leave a legacy behind for all humanity, a voice stronger than a lightning bolt, a true example of seeing life with the eyes, not just as painter instead a poet who was so in love with art that created a new universe for everyone to see and enjoy. If Pablo were alive he would now be 136 years old, indeed a century later his painters are as prevailing and admired as ever.

Museo Picasso Barcelona

I believe that everyone in life should invest time visiting museums, for me, they are the perfect place to feel relax, think, falling in love, and admire the talents of artists.

Online Museum you can find Pablo Picasso collection.

During the time I investigated and wrote this biography I realized that success has not been an easy road for anyone. During our journey we will have to listen to hundreds of NO’s and many doors will be closed in front our eyes but the most important door is our belief in ourselves. The courage and perseverance are our key that will open any door helping us to reach our most amazing dreams …

During my search for Picasso painting, I found Arty Galleries in New York. a very well know Gallery who features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, I recommend visiting as you can find everything in one place.

What was the key to Picasso’s success?

He is the only one that truly knows, a secret that he had taken to his grave, nevertheless, due to his example, I conclude to these 3 points.

1) He always worked on what he loved the most.

2) He persevered until he becomes the most famous painter of the world, even though many around him reject his ideas.

3) He investigated, studied and analyzed, Pablo had always had a restless mind. He was constantly searching for new ideas, innovating new forms, picking up singular creations that break all rules previously written or seen before, He was looking for something peculiar aspiring, he has left a huge impression on history.

Early life 

Born on October 25, 1881the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López.  Picasso’s family was of middle-class background. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz’s ancestors were minor aristocrats. 

From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork. The family moved to Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son’s technique, an apocryphal story relates, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting,  though paintings by him exist from later years.

In 1895  the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Later Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a small room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings.

Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the country’s foremost art school. At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid held many other attractions. The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colours, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso’s later work.

Pablo Picasso the Legend

Considered radical in his work, Picasso continues to garner reverence for his technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy. Together, these qualities have distinguished the «disquieting» Spaniard with the «sombre piercing» eyes as a revolutionary artist. For nearly 80 of his 91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that he superstitiously believed would keep him alive, contributing significantly to and paralleling the entire development of modern art in the 20th century.

Picasso’s Paintings

Pablo Picasso remains renowned for endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically different that his life’s work seems to be the product of five or six great artists rather than just one. Of his penchant for style diversity, Picasso insisted that his varied work was not indicative of radical shifts throughout his career, but, rather, of his dedication to objectively evaluating for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effect. «Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should,» he explained. «Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.»

Blue Period: ‘Blue Nude’ and ‘The Old Guitarist’

Art critics and historians typically break Pablo Picasso’s adult career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is called his «Blue Period,» after the colour that dominated nearly all of his paintings over these years. At the turn of the 20th century, Picasso moved to Paris, France the cultural centre of European art — to open his own studio. 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’ and ‘Two Nudes’

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome the depression that had previously debilitated him, and 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). 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. His most famous paintings from these years include «Family at Saltimbanques» (1905), «Gertrude Stein» (1905-06) and «Two Nudes» (1906).

Cubism: ‘Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon’

Cubism was an artistic style pioneered by Pablo 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. At once destructive and creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world.

In 1907, Picasso produced a painting that today is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism: «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, the work was unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before and would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century.

«It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire,» Braque said, explaining that he was shocked when he first viewed Picasso’s «Les Demoiselles.» Braque quickly became intrigued with Cubism, seeing the new style as a revolutionary movement. French writer and critic Max Jacob, a good friend of both Picasso and painter Juan Gris, called Cubism «the ‘Harbinger Comet’ of the new century,» stating, «Cubism is … a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end.»

Picasso’s early Cubist paintings, known as his «Analytic Cubist» works, include «Three Women» (1907), «Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table» (1909) and «Girl with Mandolin» (1910). His later Cubist works are distinguished as «Synthetic Cubism» for moving even further away from artistic typicalities of the time, creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny, individual fragments. These paintings include «Still Life with Chair Caning» (1912), «Card Player» (1913-14) and «Three Musicians» (1921).

Classical Period: ‘Three Women at the Spring’

Picasso’s works between 1918 and 1927 are categorized as part of his «Classical Period,» a brief return to Realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso’s art. He grew more somber and, once again, preoccupied with the depiction of reality. His most interesting and important works from this period include «Three Women at the Spring» (1921), «Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race» (1922) and «The Pipes of Pan» (1923).

Surrealism: ‘Guernica’

From 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement known as Surrealism, the artistic manifestation of which was a product of his own Cubism. Picasso’s most well-known Surrealist painting, deemed one of the greatest paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War: «Guernica.» After German bombers supporting Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso, outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, painted this work of art. In black, white and grays, the painting is a Surrealist testament to the horrors of war, and features a minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. «Guernica» remains one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history.

Later Works: ‘Self Portrait Facing Death’

In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso’s later paintings display simple, childlike imagery and crude technique. Touching on the artistic validity of these later works, Picasso once remarked upon passing a group of school kids in his old age, «When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.

In this days Pablo is a legend his works has made him immortal, writing history for all the generations, He proved it was another way of breaking rules, making a unique style of art. He achieved to be the biggest painter, be loved and never forgotten.

 Artículo en Español

 Pablo Picasso más allá de un Pintor. 

Fue una tarde de Domingo que lleve a mi hermano pequeño por las estrechas calles de Barcelona en el Barrio Gótico,para visitar el museo de Pablo Picasso. Tenia solo 9 años la misma edad que Pablo emprendiera sus primeros pasos como pintor, al finalizar la visita mi hermano me susurro al oído unas sabias palabras  «Después de la etapa azul si que cambio la forma de ver la vida»  a un mes de celebrar lo que fuera su cumpleaños comprendemos lo que significa la inmortalidad dejar un legado para la humanidad una voz mas fuerte que un relámpago un ejemplo de ver la vida con el ojo no solo de un pintor si no mas bien, un poeta del arte, Pablo cumpliría este Octubre 136 años, un siglo después sus frescos siguen tan actuales y sorprendentes como nunca.

Todos tenemos un talento para el arte unos lo plasman y otros lo saben apreciar!!

Considero que todos en la vida deberíamos invertir nuestro tiempo en visitar museos, para mi son el perfecto lugar para relajarse, pensar, enamorarse y por sobretodo admirar los talentos de los artistas.

Al escribir esta biografía me di cuenta que el éxito no ha sido fácil para nadie, que antes hay que escuchar muchos NO que se cierran muchas puertas pero la puerta mas importante es la FE que tenemos en nosotros mismo, el valor y la perseverancia son nuestras llaves que abren todas las puertas y alcanzan nuestros sueños más sorprendentes…

Cual fue la clave del éxito de Picasso?

Bueno solo él lo sabe, secreto que se lo llevo a la tumba, pero si es de mencionar 3 cosas 1) Siempre trabajó en lo que mas amaba la pintura.

2) Persevero hasta ser el pintor mas famoso del mundo aun cuando muchos estuvieran en contra de sus ideas.

3) Investigar, estudiar, analizar, Pablo siempre con una mente inquieta, busco nuevas ideas, novedosas formas, cosas singulares que rompieran las reglas de lo visto, busco algo peculiar que dejara huella.

Su Biografia.

Pablo Picasso nació el 25 de octubre de 1881, en el nº 36 de la plaza de la Merced de Málaga. Fue el primogénito del matrimonio formado por el profesor de dibujo vasco José Ruiz Blasco y la andaluza María Picasso López. Mal estudiante desde niño, destacó desde muy temprana edad por su facilidad para el dibujo.

Picasso, el único hijo varón y mayor de los tres hijos del matrimonio entre José Ruiz y María Picasso, mostró desde pequeño su fuerte aptitud artística y talento con los pinceles. El arte estuvo en su hogar desde siempre, ya que su padre era un profesor de dibujo y pintor fracasado. Era un adolescente muy seguro de su talento y de sí mismo, así que nunca dudó de que conseguiría el éxito que su padre nunca logró.

En 1891 su familia se ve obligada a trasladarse por cuestiones económicas. Su padre aceptó un trabajo de profesor en La Coruña y se trasladan.

En 1895 la familia Ruiz- Picasso reside en Barcelona. Pablo Picasso inicia su formación artística en la escuela de bellas artes La Llotja (la Longa) en Barcelona, donde su padre era profesor. De acuerdo con una de las tantas leyendas sobre Picasso, su padre, tras reconocer el asombroso talento de su hijo al ver sus primeros trabajos infantiles, le entregó sus pinceles y su paleta y prometió no volver a pintar en su vida.

A la edad de 15 años, su talento asombró a maestros y compañeros, por su asombroso dominio de la técnica, que puede observarse en obras como La Primera Comunión. En 1897 Pablo Picasso entra en la Academia de Bellas Artes de Madrid (Academia de San Fernando); tras un breve paso por ella, Picasso regresa a Barcelona, lugar en el cual monta su primer estudio a la edad de 16 años.

En 1900, Pablo Picasso viaja por primera vez a París, ciudad conocida por ese entonces como “La capital mundial del arte”, en ella se instalaría permanentemente en 1904, en el barrio Montmartre, en un deteriorado edificio conocido como el Bateau-Lavoir.

En París, Picasso compartía con varios artistas, tardes de tertulia y noche de bohemia. Recorrió burdeles, bares y espectáculos que inspiraron sus periodos Azul (1901-1904) y Rosa (1904-1906).

“El suicidio de su amigo Carles Casagemas en el año 1901, inspiró a Picasso el periodo Azul, llamado así por el predominio de este color. Telas como La Vida (1903), representan seres tristes, fatigados, hambrientos o deprimidos. A partir de 1906, la época Rosa refleja, sobre todo, la vida errante del circo.”

Posterior al periodo Azul y Rosa, vendría la etapa cubista, tal vez su más grande aporte al arte del siglo XX, por lo cual fue considerado un revolucionario. Entre junio y julio de 1907, Pablo Picasso pintó una gran tela de casi seis metros cuadrados, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, una obra con rostros y cuerpos deformados, y posiciones anatómicas llamativas, así nacía El Cubismo.

“Yo pinto los objetos tal como los pienso, no como los veo.” – Pablo Picasso.

En el auge del cubismo, se separa de su compañera Fernande, tiempo después se le ve con una nueva pareja, Eva Guel.

Entre 1912 y 1915 crea sus collages y ensamblajes, junto a su amigo y compañero, el pintor francés, Georges Braque. Eva Guel muere en 1915.

Entre 1917 y 1921, Pablo Picasso inicia lo que se denomina su etapa clásica, en la que fue una de sus facetas menos conocidas, por ese entonces colaboró con Serguéi Diáguilev, el empresario de los Ballets rusos- Picasso pintó los escenarios de Parade (1919), El sombrero de tres picos (1920) y Pulcinella (1921) entre otros espectáculos. En un viaje por Italia conoció a su primera esposa, Olga Koklova, con quien se casaría en 1918. El 4 de febrero de 1921 nace su primer hijo, Paulo.

En 1936 estalla la Guerra Civil Española. Por encargo de la república española, para la Exposición universal de París de 1937, Pablo Picasso representó el bombardeo de la población vasca de Guernica por parte de la aviación nazi. Picasso comenzó a pintar la obra el 1 de mayo de 1937 y la finalizó el 4 de junio del mismo año. Guernica se convertiría en un símbolo de libertad.

En 1944 Picasso ingresa al partido comunista francés. Entre 1946 y 1953 tiene dos hijos fruto de su relación con Françoise Gilot, a quienes llamarían Claude y Paloma.

Pablo Picasso también se considera un escultor destacado, tanto así que fue uno de los pioneros en el uso de materiales extraños, como el coche de juguete que usó como rostro de su Cabeza de la mona con su pequeño. Del mismo modo fue ceramista, esta técnica le atraía por la capacidad de crear obras tridimensionales.

Entre 1955 y 1973, Pablo Picasso pinta y crea sin parar. Su legado, más de 20.000 obras, producto de siete décadas de trabajo e inspiración ininterrumpidas.

Pablo Picasso muere el 8 de abril de 1973, debido a un edema pulmonar, en la ciudad de Mougins, Francia, a los 91 años.

“El artista es un receptáculo de emociones procedentes de cualquier lugar: del cielo, de la tierra, de un trozo de papel, de una figura que pasa, de una telaraña.” – Pablo Picasso.

Es considerado desde el génesis del siglo XX como uno de los mayores pintores que participaron en muchos movimientos artísticos que se propagaron por el mundo y ejercieron una gran influencia en otros grandes artistas de su tiempo. Sus trabajos están presentes en museos y colecciones de toda Europa y del mundo. Además, abordó otros géneros como el dibujo, el grabado, la ilustración de libros, la escultura, la cerámica y el diseño de escenografía y vestuario para montajes teatrales. El crítico de arte y coleccionista Christian Zervos reproduce en su catálogo más de 16 000 obras de Picasso.

En lo político, Picasso se declaraba pacifista y comunista. Fue miembro del Partido Comunista de España y del Partido Comunista Francés hasta su muerte, acaecida el 8 de abril de 1973 a los 91 años de edad, en su casa llamada «Notre-Dame-de-Vie», situada en Mougins (Francia). Está enterrado en el parque del castillo de Vauvenargues (Bouches-du-Rhone).

En la actualidad Pablo es una leyenda sus obras lo han hecho inmortal dejando una huella en la historia para muchas generaciones.

Durante mi investigacion de la pintura de Picasso, encontré Arty Galleries en Nueva York. una Galería muy conocida que cuenta con la informacíon online de las galerías líderes de todo el mundo, podrás encontrar colecciones de museos, fundaciones, propiedades de artistas, ferias de arte, y subastas,  recomiendo darle una visita virtual pues puedes encontrar informacion bien interesante.

Escribio Catalina Donso para Positive Diva.