Who is Pablo Picasso?

Pablo Picasso, with his full name Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (born 25 October 1881 - died 8 April 1973), Spanish painter, sculptor who lived in France, scene designer, poet and playwright. It is one of the best known names of 20th century art. Together with Georges Braque, he laid the foundation of the cubism movement, invented assemblage, took part in the invention of collage and contributed to the development of a wide variety of styles. His most important works are the pioneering work of cubism, The Girls of Avignon and Guernica, which describes the massacre of German and Italian soldiers during the Spanish Civil War.

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. His father was a painter and art teacher. He was directed by his father to paint at a young age. His talent for painting was discovered in a short time. He entered the Fine Arts School in 1895. From 1901, he started using his mother's name, Picasso. His work has been published in the Spanish magazine Juventut.

He went to Paris for the first time in 1900. He lived for a while in the Montmartre district, where the innovative artists of the period lived. Picasso painted ordinary people, circus clowns and acrobats in his early works, circa 1901-04. Circus life was as interesting as life in big cities. However, in his paintings he reflected the sad side of this life. This period of the artist is defined as the 'Blue Period'.

Picasso is considered to have laid the foundations of cubism with Georges Braque. He makes paintings from 1907 to 1914 in the style called cubist. The general feature of Cubist paintings is the use of geometry and geometric shapes. The objects depicted are simplified or divided into geometric shapes to form geometric forms. Another feature of cubism is the effort to transfer a three-dimensional object in space to a two-dimensional surface. For this purpose, Picasso divides the shapes on their lateral surfaces and tries to show each of them on a two-dimensional surface. For this reason, both the profile and the frontal view of the people in his portraits are seen.

During World War I, Picasso remained in Rome with Jean Cocteau. While working as a stage decorator, she meets dancer Olga Kokhlova. Picasso painted many portraits of his first wife, Olga Kokhlova, and her son. (Paul en Pierrot, 1925, Picasso Museum, Paris)

In the early 20s the painter returns to classicism: Trois Femmes à la fontaine (1921, Museum of Modern Art, Paris). It is also inspired by mythology: les Flûtes de Pan (1923, Picasso Museum, Paris).

Picasso is the most prolific artist known. According to the Guiness Book of Records, he produced a total of 100,000 prints, 34,000 book paintings and 300 sculptures, and many ceramics and drawings.

Her famous work, Women of Avignon, depicting five prostitutes in a brothel and considered one of the most important examples of the Cubism movement, was drawn in France in the summer of 1907.

His best-known work is Guernica, which describes the bombing of the German air force on the town of Guernica. The picture was made in 1937. This painting is currently in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. During one of his exhibitions, Picasso replied "No, you did" to a German general who asked him "Did you make this picture?" This picture depicts Picasso's strong hatred of the war and the bombing of Guernica. The human and animal figures in the painting reflect the pain, sadness and hatred for war.

The artist came to the fore as a writer and poet, as well as a painter. He wrote poems, wrote a surrealist play.

He was also accused of smuggling Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Florence, the city where this work was born. However, the allegations were never proven.

Although Picasso expressed sympathy and support for the Catalan independence movement that emerged in his youth, he did not actively participate. It did not join the armed forces of either side during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War. As a Spanish living in France, he did not show any resistance against the occupying Germans in both World Wars. However, in 1940, his application for French citizenship was rejected because of his "extreme views that could evolve into communism".