Pablo Picasso

Picasso, Pablo (Pablo Ruiz y Picasso; 1881–1973), Spanish-born French painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and ceramist, considered by many the greatest artist of the 20th century. A precocious painter, after his melancholy “blue period” and his lyrical “rose period” (1901–6), he was influenced by African and primitive art, as shown in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). Together, he and Georges Braque created cubism (1907–14), its principles seen already in Demoiselles. His friends at this time included the poet and critic Apollinaire, the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev (for whom he made stage designs), and the expatriate author Gertrude Stein, who acted as a patron for modernist artists. In 1921 he painted both the cubist Three Musicians and the classical Three Women at the Fountain. In the 1930s he adopted the style of surrealism, using it to horrify in the large antiwar canvas Guernica (1937). His later work employed both cubist and surrealist forms and could be beautiful, tender, or grotesque. His output was enormous, and near the end of his life he produced a brilliant series of etchings.