Pablo Picasso

25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973

Pablo Picasso is easily one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.  He grew up in a small city in Spain with his middle class family.  From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting.  At 13 years old, Pablo's father was at professor at a College of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain.  Pablo's father persuaded the officials to allow Pablo to take an entrance exam into the advanced class. The students had a month to finish the exam, but Pablo finished in a week.  He was immediately entered into the class because of how much he impressed the officials.  Pablo went out on his own at age 16 to Madrid.  That is where he realized his love for El Greco's work. He mostly loved the elongated limbs and arresting colors.  This was just the start of Picasso's amazing adventure. He eventually died while he was out to dinner with some friends and his wife.

A cool fact about Pablo is that his first word was "pencil."  I think this is cool because it's as if he was born for this profession.

I personally like Picasso because he was not afraid to go out on his own and explore.  He also wasn't looking for fame through his paintings, fame just found him.  I also really like his paintings as opposed to some of the other painters during this time because he had a lot of shapes and they are all really fun to look at.  One could look at his paintings for hours and never get bored because there is always so much to each of them.

This is my personal favorite paining from Pablo because I love the emotions on her face and all the crazy colors and shapes included in this.