Picasso's Full Name Has 23 Words
Picasso was baptized Pablo
Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de
la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. He was named after
various saints and relatives. The "Picasso" is actually from his
mother, Maria Picasso y Lopez. His father is named Jose Ruiz Blasco
When He Was Born, The Midwife
Thought He Was Stillborn
Picasso had such a difficult
birth and was such a weak baby that when he was born, the midwife thought that
he was stillborn so she left him on a table to attend his mother. It was his
uncle, a doctor named Don Salvador, that saved him.
Picasso's First Word: Pencil
It's like Picasso was born an
artist: his first word was "piz," short of lápiz the Spanish word for
'pencil.' His father Ruiz, an artist and art professor, gave him a formal
education in art starting from the age of 7. By 13, Ruiz vowed to give up
painting as he felt that Pablo had surpassed him.
Pablo's First Drawing
At the tender young age of 9, Picasso
completed his first painting: Le picador, a man riding a horse in a bullfight.
His first major painting, an "academic"
work is First Communion, featuring a portrait of his father, mother, and
younger sister kneeling before an altar. Picasso was 15 when he finished it.
Picasso was a Terrible Student
No doubt about it, Picasso was
brilliant: artistically, he was years ahead of his classmates who were all five
to six years older than him. But Picasso chafed at being told what to do and he
was often thrown into "detention":
6. Picasso's First Job
Picasso signed his first
contract in Paris with art dealer Pere Menach, who agreed to pay him 150 francs
per month (about US$750 today).
7. Did Picasso Steal the Mona
Lisa?
Actually no, but in 1911, when
the famous painting Mona Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci was stolen from the Louvre, the
police took in Picasso's friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire
fingered Picasso as a suspect, so the police hauled him in for questioning. Both
were later released.
8. Cubism: Full of Little
Cubes
In 1909, Picasso and French
artist Georges Braque co-founded an art movement known as cubism. Actually, it
was a French art critic Louis Vauxcelles who first called it "bizarre
cubiques" or cubism, after noting that Picasso and Braque's paintings are "full
of little cubes."
9. Picasso was a close friend
of Marc Chagall
Picasso and Chagall, two of
the greatest painters of the last century, were friends...Read the whole story.
10. Picasso claimed "Paul
Cézanne was my one and only master."
In 1943, Pablo Picasso
declared to photographer George Brassaï that artist Paul Cézanne was "my
one and only master."...Read the whole story
11. Where is Picasso buried?
Picasso was buried in the
grounds of a château that he bought on a whim in 1958 in the village of
Vauvenargues in the south of France.
Picasso is said to have bought
the estate after discovering that it lay on the slopes of Mont Sainte-Victoire,
which was painted more than 30 times by Paul Cézanne, the Impressionist artist.
"I have just bought myself Cézanne's mountains," he told his agent
SOURCE : www.pablopicasso.org
