Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a Spanish artist who did both painting and sculpting. He is most famous for starting a new style of art (along with Basque artist George Braque) called cubism, which embodied the neuroses (some would say schizophrenia) of artist of his era. He was the single most dominating figure in modern art.

The son of an art teacher, Picasso was only 12 when he began exhibiting his first paintings in his famous primitive style in Barcelona. He created 20,000 paintings, sculptures and drawings during his life. Perhaps his most famous painting was Guernica, which was inspired by his outrage at the destruction of a Communist stronghold during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso, a Communist, supported the government that General Franco defeated. Picasso found a more welcoming home in France, and never returned to Spain.^[1]

With his Charnel House of 1945, Picasso concluded the series of pictures that he had started with Guernica. The connection between the paintings becomes immediately obvious when we consider the rigidly limited color scheme and the triangular composition of the center. [1]

In spite of his left-wing views, Picasso died a very wealthy man and left a fortune estimated to be $50 million.