Pablo Ruiz Picasso

Born on 25 October 1881 in Malaga (Andalusia), Picasso began drawing at a very young age with his father, a drawing teacher. In 1895, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, La Lonja, before continuing at the Royal Academy San Fernando in Madrid. Returning to Barcelona from 1899, he worked in particular as an illustrator for magazines and newspapers and regularly attended the Cabaret els quatre gats. In 1901, he adopted his mother's name as his signature: "Picasso". He will now sign his works in this way.
From 1904, he settled permanently in France after three stays in previous years. He first moved in with his first wife Fernande Olivier to the famous Montmartre workshop, the Bateau-Lavoir. He met in the capital among many others.

Cubism
Picasso appears as the main representative of cubism with Georges Braque. This movement raises a controversy by developing a new way of painting, by breaking down forms and multiplying the points of view that appear simultaneously on the same work. Indeed, if artists like Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger developed a real theory of cubism, Picasso and Braque remained attached to technical novelty rather than theory... Following Cézanne's precubism, the years 1908 to 1912 corresponded to the "Analytical Cubism" of which Picasso would say "it was simply an art that was concerned with form". It seeks to break the traditional perspective.

Feeling the inexorable passage of time in his last years, he creates with an inextinguishable passion and fervour a powerful erotic series about couples. For Pablo Picasso, "It is in the work of a lifetime that the real seduction lies".