Pablo Picasso

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:

Blue Period (1901–1904), consisting of somber, blue-tinted paintings influenced by a trip through Spain and the recent death of a friend, often featuring depictions of acrobats, harlequins, prostitutes, beggars and other artists.
Rose Period (1905–1907), characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and again featuring many harlequins. He met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris at this time, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his exposure to French painting.
African-influenced Period (1908–1909), influenced by the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were themselves inspired by African artifacts.
Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), a style of painting he developed along with Braque using monochrome brownish colours, where they took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time are very similar to each other.
Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), involving the use of collage and cut paper, the first time collage had been used in fine art.

Early life

An 1896 self-portrait by Picasso.Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, the first child of José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. His full name is Pablo Diego José Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso.

Picasso's father was José Ruiz Blasco, a painter whose specialty was the naturalistic depiction of birds, and who for most of his life was also a professor of art at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts and a curator of a local museum. The young Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his mother, his first word was "'piz," a shortening of lapiz, the Spanish word for pencil.[1] It was from his father that Picasso had his first formal academic art training, such as figure drawing and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art schools throughout his childhood, often those where his father taught, he never finished his college-level course of study at the Academy of Arts (Academia de San Fernando) in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.

The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona days who, for many years, was Picasso's personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as rarely seen works from his old age that clearly demonstrate Picasso's firm grounding in classical techniques.

Picasso used harlequins in many of his early works, especially in his Blue and Rose Periods. A comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, the harlequin became a personal symbol for Picasso. During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a motif which he used often in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and appears in Picasso's Guernica.