onfidential Concepts, worldwide, USA
© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
© Picasso Estate/ARS, New York, USA
Foreword
“People want to find “meaning” in everything and everyone. That is the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more pratical than any other age.”
Pablo Picasso, Photograph, 1904
Dedicated to Suzanne and Henri Bloch
Biography
1881: Birth of Pablo Ruiz Picasso in Málaga. Parents: José Ruiz Blasco, a teacher of drawing at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts and curator of the local museum, and Maria Picasso y Lopez.
1888–89: The first of little Pablo’s paintings, Picador.
1895: In Madrid, at the Prado he discovers Velázquez and Goya. Enrols at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, popularly called “La Lonja”. His father rents a studio for him. Paints his first large academic canvas, First Communion.
1899: In Barcelona joins a group of avant-garde intellectual artists who frequent the café Els Quatre Gats. Modernist tendencies appear in his works. Paints The Last Moments.
1900: The Last Moments is exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle.
1901: Publishes the review Arte Joven. Development of pre-Fauvist style (Cabaret Period). Exhibition of 65 of his works at the Galerie Vollard. Friendship with Max Jacob. Influenced by Lautrec and Van Gogh. The Casagemas death cycle. First Blue paintings.
1902: Develops Blue style in Barcelona.
1904: Moves into the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre. End of Blue Period. Takes up engraving. Friendship with Apollinaire and Salmon. Meets Fernande Olivier.
1905: Exhibits at Galerie Serrurier (travelling circus themes). Completes the large canvas Family of Saltimbanques. End of the Circus Period.
1906: Rose Classicism. Gertrude Stein introduces Picasso to Matisse. Meets André Derain. Summer in Gosol. That autumn in Paris: paints a self-portrait reflecting Iberian archaic sculpture.
1907: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. That summer visits the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro, where he discovers for himself African sculpture. Meets Kahnweiler and Georges Braque.
1908: Proto-Cubism. The term “Cubism” is born.
1909: From May to September works in Horta de Ebro, develops Analytical Cubism.
1910: “High” phase of Analytical Cubism. Nine works shown in London, in the Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition.
1912: Makes his first collage, Still-Life with Chair Caning. Transition of Cubism to Synthetic phase. First papiers collés and constructions.
1914: Rococo Cubism combines with Cubist structures in a foreshadowing of Surrealist methods.
1915: “Ingres” portraits.
1917: Joins the Diaghilev troupe in Rome, works on décor and costumes for the ballet Parade. Meets ballerina Olga Khokhlova (1891–1955).
1918: Wedding of Picasso and Olga (12 July). Death of Apollinaire (9 November). Moves to 23, rue La Boétie.
1919: Trip to London (May-August): design décor and costumes for the ballet Le Tricorne (by Manuel de Falla).
1921: Birth of son Paulo (4 February). Continues to work for Diaghilev (Cuadro Flamenco). Neo-Classicism.
1925: Works in Monte Carlo for the Ballets Russes. Paints The Dance.
1927: In January meets seventeen-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter. Theme of biomorphic bathers. First etchings for Le Chef-d’œuvre Inconnu by Balzac.
1928: Executes the huge collage Minotaur. Studio theme appears in his painting, and welded constructions in sculpture (aided by Julio González).
1930: Crucifixion based on Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. Series of etchings illustrating Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
1932: Major retrospective (236 works) in Paris and Zurich. Lives and works at Boisgeloup: “Biomorphic metamorphic” style. Zervos publishes the first volume of the Picasso Catalogue Raisonné.
1933: First issue of the Surrealist magazine Minotaure. Bullfight and female toreador themes. Fernande Olivier publishes her memoirs, Picasso et Ses Amis. Also published is Bernhard Geiser’s Catalogue Raisonné.
1935: Engraves Minotauromachy. That summer completely abandons painting in favour of writing. Birth of Maia, daughter of Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter. Jaime Sabartés, becomes his companion and secretary.
1936: Friendship with Paul Eluard. Beginning of the Civil War in Spain (18 July); the Republican Government appoints him director of the Prado Museum. Meets Dora Maar, who becomes his mistress. Together they discover the town of Vallauris, a nearby ceramics centre.
1937: Finds new studio at 7, Rue de Grands-Augustins, where he works on Guernica throughout May.
1938: Women at Their Toilette. Series of seated women (Dora) and portraits of children (Maia).
1939: Death of Picasso’s mother in Barcelona (13 January). Barcelona and Madrid fall. Guernica exhibited in America. Outbreak of World War II finds him in Paris. Leaves for Royan, where he stays, on and off, until December. Major retrospective, Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1943: Makes the acquaintance of the young painter Françoise Gilot.
1945: Paints the anti-war The Charnel House. Is attracted to lithography: a portrait of Françoise Gilot.
1946: Painting Monument aux Espagnols. Begins living with François Gilot. The Palais Grimaldi, soon renamed the Musée Picasso; the themes include fauns, naiads, centaurs.
1947: Birth of Claude, first child of Françoise and Picasso (15 May). Takes up ceramics in Vallauris.
1948: Illustrations. Together with Eluard, flies to Wroclaw, Poland, for the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace; receives Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of the Renaissance of the Polish Republic. Exhibits 149 ceramics in November in Paris.
1949: Lithograph of a dove for the poster of the Peace Congress in Paris becomes known as the Dove of Peace. Birth of Paloma (19 April), daughter of Picasso and Françoise Gilot.
1950: Awarded the Peace Prize.
1951: Paints Massacre in Korea, exhibited in Salon de Mai, Paris. Most of the time lives in the Midi, works at Vallauris, visits Matisse in Nice.
1953: Major retrospectives in Rome, Milan, Lyons, São Paulo. Separation from Françoise Gilot.
1954: Drawings in Painter and Model series. Portrait of Jacqueline Roque. Series of paintings based on Delacroix’s Women of Algiers.
