Pablo Picasso: 10 facts about the renowned Spanish artist

1. How many works of art did Picasso create in his lifetime?

Estimates vary and depend on how you define a work of art. According to some sources, the Spanish painter and sculptor created around 50,000 works, about two a day throughout his adult life. This includes paintings, prints, book illustrations, pottery and much more.

No other artist of his generation was as productive, even in old age. Picasso worked until the day he died at the age of 91.

2. How old was Pablo Picasso when he painted his first painting?

His first known painting was an oil painting: “Elpicador amarillo” (The Yellow Bullfighter) or “El Pequeno Picador” (The Little Bullfighter), inspired by a visit to a bullfight. At that time, Pablo Ruiz Picasso was only nine years old. He came from an art-loving family and his father was also a painter.

Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain, a city with a centuries-old artistic tradition. His father taught at an art school. There were paint supplies all over the house. His father recognized him as a “child prodigy” and improved his academic drawing from an early age.

3. Did Pablo Picasso train as an artist?

In 1892, the talented Pablo was accepted into the Malaga School of Art. In addition to regular school lessons, young Pablo used every free minute to paint and draw and quickly qualified for higher education.

After high school, he transferred to the art academy in Barcelona and, shortly thereafter, to the renowned San Fernando Academy in Madrid. But the young painter did not like the teaching methods. After only half a year, he left the institute, and from then on he was self-taught.

He quenched his thirst for knowledge in museums, salons and studios, studied the techniques of other artists and absorbed everything that arose around him in the form of new art, literature and music.

4. How did he become known by the mononym ‘Picasso?’

Early on, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Picasso is his mother’s maiden name) still signed his full name on paintings. From 1900 he began to sign his paintings with just the word “Picasso”. At that time, he was still living and working in Barcelona. It wasn’t until 1904 that he moved into a studio in Paris.

Later, his surname became synonymous with great art and his daring gestural technique of painting and drawing. Early on, paintings by him were still heavily colored and almost gaudy. The talented young Spaniard wanted to attract attention at any cost. Picasso’s big ego led to tremendous productivity.

5. What was Picasso’s full last name?

Picasso came from a middle-class family. With his two younger sisters, Pablo grew up in an educated environment. It was a family tradition to give children many illustrative names. Picasso’s full name was: Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Crispiano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

6. What are Picasso’s most famous works?

With the “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, Picasso created the first Cubist painting – an abstract art style – and revolutionized art history. The nude women he portrayed are no longer seen from just one perspective, but from multiple angles at once.

Picasso also left his mark in his second masterpiece, dated 1937. Shortly after the Nazi Condor Legion’s attack on the small village of Guernica (Gernika in Basque) in the Basque Country, he dedicated the gigantic canvas at the Paris World’s Fair to the victims of the attack. The anti-war painting is a protest against totalitarianism. Picasso did not want it to return to Spain until the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who took power in 1939 until his death in 1975. Today it is back in Spain, on display at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.

7. When did Picasso start making money from his art?

Through the works of what is now known as his “Blue Period” and the subsequent “Pink Period”, which lasted until 1904, Picasso became increasingly well known as a painter in Paris. In 1906 he met Henri Matisse, the most important French artist of the time, who provided him with numerous contacts.

Through him, Picasso also met Ambroise Vollard, who bought all of his “Rose Period” paintings from him and made him financially secure for the first time. Later, German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, himself a celebrity in the art world, did some shopping, helping Picasso become one of the most expensive artists of the 20th century.

Kahnweiler also managed the sale of one of Picasso’s main works – the great painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. In addition to Picasso, the enterprising Franco-German gallerist also hired the painters George Braque, Juan Gris and Ferdinand Leger, but in exchange he banned all of them from participating in the official salons and exhibitions in Paris. As a result of his newfound wealth, Picasso was finally able to afford a new apartment and extensive travels.

8. How much is Picasso’s most valuable painting worth?

In 2015 in New York, “Les Femmes d’Alger” (The Women of Algiers) grossed $179.4 million (€164.7 million), making it a record for any painting by Picasso.

The large painting is the last in a series painted between 1954 and 1955 and was sold at Christie’s auction house.

The entire series was purchased in 1956 by Victor and Sally Ganz from Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris for $212,500 (about $2 million in today’s money).

9. How old was Picasso when he painted his last picture?

Although Picasso’s last known self-portrait was completed just under a year before his death, he actually worked until the day he died, aged 91, on April 8, 1973, at his villa Notre-Dame- de Vie on the Côte d’Azur.

In the last active years of his life as a painter, Picasso increasingly devoted himself to delicate small-scale still lifes and the interior of his penultimate domicile, the “Villa La Californie”, in the south of France.

There he lived in seclusion with his second wife Jacqueline, who largely shielded him from the outside world and their other children, and their daughter Catherine. He has long distanced himself from the bustling Paris art scene and the centers of the international art world, where he was celebrated as the “genius of the century”.

10 What did Picasso bequeath to his heirs and posterity?

The artist left four children by three different women and eight grandchildren.

Shortly after Picasso’s death, a bitter legal dispute broke out between the heirs. Family relationships were complicated. Picasso was officially married twice.

The children of the relationship with Françoise Gilot – the photographer Claude Picasso and the stylist Paloma Picasso -, as well as the grandchildren of the legitimate son – Paulo Picasso (1921-1975) – fought bitterly for their share in the vast inheritance.

In 1976, Picasso’s worldly possessions were estimated at 3.75 billion French francs (about €696 million, $757 million). This included homes, real estate, studios, various estates, and Picasso’s own private art collection with prized paintings by artists he befriended or greatly admired, such as Matisse, Miro, Modigliani, Cézanne, and Van Gogh.

The artistic estate of the famous Spanish painter was estimated at 1.275 billion francs. It included: 1,885 paintings, 7,089 drawings, 19,134 graphics, 3,222 ceramic works, 1,228 sculptures and objects, plus 175 sketchbooks with around 7,000 drawings, which Picasso used to make as preliminary sketches for larger works.

His paintings, drawings and sculptures became the basis of the Picasso Museum in Paris, opened in 1985 – where even today tourists from all over the world come to marvel at his works of art.

This article was originally written and published in German on March 13, 2019. This is an updated version to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death this year.