The titan of art: Pablo Picasso

A titan who grabbed the 20th century by the throat and shook it until cubes, violent colors, and cries of pain emerged: Picasso. Born in Málaga, in sunburned Andalusia, on October 25, 1881, Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso—a name that is already a destiny, a miniature epic—carried within him the seed of revolution. A son of art, young Pablo breathed turpentine and dreams of glory. His father, José Ruiz Blasco, a drawing teacher, introduced him to the mysteries of form and color. By the age of thirteen, the prodigy had surpassed his master. Barcelona, then Madrid, welcomed him into their academies, but the young Picasso grew restless, yearning for an art that was not merely an imitation of reality. Paris, the City of Light, called him. It was here, in the early 1900s, that his Blue Period unfolded—melancholic and heartrending, like a flamenco song. The poor, the marginalized, and the circus performers became the protagonists of a stark, essential painting, infused with a deep sense of human compassion.

It is the time of the Rose Period, a more peaceful, more sensual era. The figures become more solid, and the outlines softer. Harlequins, acrobats, and dancers populate his canvases, immersed in an atmosphere of melancholic poetry. And then, the turning point. The encounter with the primitive and powerful African art, and the geometries of Cézanne shake Picasso’s soul. Cubism is born, a revolution that shatters traditional perspective, breaks reality into a thousand facets, and reassembles it according to a new order. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a scandalous and magnificent work, where female figures, deformed and angular, are reduced to geometric volumes. Space is fragmented, planes intersect, perspective implodes, marking the beginning of a new adventure. He experimented, innovated, destroyed and rebuilt. Collages, sculptures, ceramics, scenic designs, nothing is precluded to him. His art is a river in flood that overwhelms every bank, an endless labyrinth where viewers get lost and find themselves.

The Spanish Civil War and the bombing of Guernica marked him deeply. Guernica, an immense cry of pain, is his indictment of barbarism, a warning to all humanity. In the post-war years, Picasso continued to create his work with tireless energy. His art, now elevated to myth, became more peaceful, more playful. Women, bulls, and fauns populated his canvases, bathed in a Mediterranean of light and color. Until the very end, Picasso never stopped searching, experimenting, and challenging the limits of form and color. His legacy is immense, an inexhaustible treasure. A man who lived a thousand lives, an artist who reinvented art, a genius who left an indelible mark on human history.  Picasso was an explosion of light in the heart of the century, a hurricane that swept away old certainties, a genius who shaped the world’s matter in his own likeness. 

Opening image: Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973), La Baie de Cannes, Cannes, 19 aprile 1958 - 9 giugno 1958. Olio su tela, 130 x 195 cm. Musée national Picasso-Paris. Dation Pablo Picasso, 1979. MP212 © Succession Picasso by SIAE 2024. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau

The images of the works in this article are from the exhibition ‘Picasso The Stranger’ currently running at the Palazzo Reale in Milan until February 2025.