was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker,
ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult
life in France.
Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century,
he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the
invention of constructed sculpture,the co-invention
of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped
develop and explore.
Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937),
a dramatic portrayal
of the
bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air
forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent
in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through
his childhood and adolescence.
During the first decade of the 20th century,
his style changed as he experimented with different theories,
techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work
of the slightly older artist
Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical
styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists,
who subsequently were often paired by critics as the
leaders of modern art.
Picasso's work is often categorized into periods.
While the names of many of his later periods
are debated, the most commonly accepted
periods in his work are the Blue Period
(1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the
African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism
(1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism
(1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.
Much of Picasso's
work of the late 1910s and early 1920s
is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s
often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often
combines elements of his earlier styles.
