Spanish painter, sculptor, designer, decorator and writer In 1891, he moved to La Coruña, where he was taught painting by his father. In 1985, he attended the La Lonja art school in Barcelona and, the following year, opened his private studio in the same city. He was a member of the group of intellectuals that frequented the café El Quatre Gats and, in 1900, he visited Paris for the first time, where he painted representations of images of the music hall and circus life. 1901 to 1904 is called his "blue period" and is characterised by blue portraits of people in exile, beggars and prostitutes. During this period, Picasso produced his first sculptures. In 1904, he moved to Paris where he opened a new studio and where he met Matisse, Derain and Gertrude Stein, the first person to collect his works. His painting moved into the "pink period". During this period, Picasso painted figures connected to popular artistic imagery like the acrobats, harlequins and clowns. In the 1905 Salon d' Automne, he saw same works by Cézanne and Rousseau, and their influence was fundamental for the evolution of his artistic career. In 1907, his style changed completely particularly through the work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, in which the bases for the development of a new style, Cubism, were laid. In 1909, along with Braque, he developed Analytical Cubism and opened a new studio. Between 1910 and 1912, he sold paintings to the Russian collector Sergey Shchukin and to Gertrude Stein and he held exhibitions in several countries, from Moscow to New York. Like Braque, with whom he worked intensively in that period, Picasso refused to show his works at the Salons d' Automne and at the Salons des Indépendants. In 1912, he began his three-dimensional paintings, including metal sheets and wire as constructive elements, like his first papiers collés, a variation of the collage technique. In 1913, he participated in collective exhibitions in Vienna, Prague, New York and Moscow. In the same year, he held his first retrospective exhibition with works between 1901 and 1912, at the Thannhauser Gallery in Munich. Between 1916 and 1924, he designed several productions for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In the 20s, Picasso had a neo-classical period and, in 1930, he created a sculpture studio at the Boisgeloup castle. In 1937, he painted one of his most famous works, Guernica, for the Paris World Fair, using abstraction, deformation and anatomic mutilation as a protest against the bombing of the Basque town by the German Condor Legion. In 1940, he moved back to Paris and, in 1944, he joined the French Communist Party. In the 50, he began exploring the works of the old masters and painted variations of pieces by Velasquez, Delacroix and Manet. In his striking later style, from 1960 until his death, Picasso strongly opposed the growing predominance of Abstractionism. He donated all his works to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, opened in 1970 and in 1985 the Musée Picasso in Paris was created. Picasso is considered the dominant figure of 20th century art, with a central role in the development of the image of the modern artist.
