Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Introduction

With his early interest in pencil and paper, Don José had high hopes his son might become an artist and follow in his footsteps. (José's father had been a middle-class merchant, an occupation that never appealed to José.) Pablo's father began giving him formal instruction in art and drawing when his son was only six or seven. Picasso took to these studies with a keen interest. He soon became obsessed with art, at the expense of the rest of his studies. According to the artist, he never learned his ABCs in the proper order. He also claimed that he graduated from grammar school only "because a kindly Malaga schoolmaster supplied him with the answers he required to pass an arithmetic test."

Work and Paintings

Although many of the paintings and other artwork created by Picasso's father was second rate, almost amateurish, he proved himself to be a good teacher to his young son. As a Spanish painter, he had an intense love of realism but was willing to experiment. Don José once bought a plaster head of a Greek goddess on which he painted a realistic face, recreating the female head as a religious image after Our Lady of Sorrows. He even added hair for eyebrows and painted golden tears running down her cheeks. The adult Picasso remembered the art experiment as "always very ugly,"13 but the point was to experiment with materials and mediums in new ways. It was a lesson Pablo Picasso never forgot (Scarborough, 2002).

Another popular subject of Picasso's childhood art was the bullfight, an important Spanish pastime. Don José took him to bullfights when he was so young that Pablo could attend for free, since he could sit on his father's lap. The first time Picasso attempted an oil painting, his subject was of a crowd that was watching a picador at a bullfight. (A picador is a horseman who uses a lance to stab the bull's neck muscles so the animal keeps its head down when the matador enters the bullring.) Pablo was eight or nine when he painted the picador picture, and he kept this early painting for the rest of his life (Nichols & Picasso, 2006).

Progress as an Artist

One reality was true: Young Pablo Picasso was revealing more and more talent and a greater interest in art with each passing year. He filled notebooks and sketch pads with an endless variety of subjects. ...