Pablo Picasso Facts And How He Influenced The Art World

Many of Pablo Picasso's influences on art can be traced back to his foundation work in cubism, but they don't end there. After World War I, Picasso joined the neoclassical movement, which sought to restore order to the continent after what was to that point the bloodiest conflict in history. Although the works Picasso created during this brief period of his career weren't as identifiable as his others, his participation in the movement did serve to establish him as a mainstream art superstar.

Indeed, it was during his surrealist period that immediately followed neoclassicism in the late 1920s that Picasso arguably began to pick up on the threads of his earlier periods. With cubism, he had his own indigenous artistic language for subverting the realism that had undergirded his neoclassical works. The most famous example of his work during this time was the Bathers series, defined by exaggerated body parts in the context of a day at the beach. It was during this period that he met his first wife Olga, a ballet dancer whom he married in 1918 and with whom he had one child.

Picasso's personal life was in many ways as captivating as his art. He lived until 1973 and died in France at the age of 91. While this might not seem like an interesting fact about Pablo Picasso, his long life is remarkable compared with the untimely deaths of many of his contemporaries.

For me, one of the most compelling Pablo Picasso facts is that while he was known primarily as a painter, his influence on art was arguably even more important as it related to sculpture. This was both because of the fact that synthetic cubism literally "sculpted" together pieces of things he found elsewhere and the fact that Picasso's later-career foray into sculpture ended up being influential. The work he created was the main reason for this, although his level of celebrity by that point in his life certainly didn't hurt.

These days, Picasso's lasting mark on the world is so great that you don't even need to know the name of a single piece of his art to feel the weight of his name when it's mentioned. Likewise, while Picasso will forever be associated with high art, the fact that the word "collage" is now mainstream is thanks to him. Pablo Picasso's influence on art is so prevalent today that making collages is something even children do. So, if you've ever pasted together things you've found elsewhere into a creation of your own, you can consider yourself a student of Picasso!

The collection of the Musée Picasso, a sun-soaked French Riviera idyll where Picasso spent a considerable amount of time, is only a fraction as extensive as its counterpart in Paris. However, what's compelling about this place is both its architecture (a medieval castle) and the fact that Picasso once used the castle as his art studio. It was the world's first Picasso museum and contains art personally donated by both the artist and his second wife, Jacqueline. The most compelling work here is arguably "Le Baiser," an ambitious 15-painting series that breaks down the pleasure and emotion of a kiss.

If you're interested in tracing Picasso's roots without necessarily seeing a large amount of art, you could head down the Mediterranean from Antibes to Malaga, the artist's birthplace. In addition to another Picasso museum, which houses a comparatively modest 285 pieces of art, you can visit the house where Picasso was born (at 15 Plaza de la Merced), the church where he was baptized and even La Malagueta, a bullring that apparently inspired the brutality in some of Picasso's work.