Pablo Ruiz Picasso

AUGUSTE MOREAU (France, 1834 - 1917).
"Mother and daughter".
Sculpture in calamine.
Signed on the base.
Measurements: 56 x 27 x 25 cm.
This lithograph belongs to the series 'Papiers Collés' by Picasso, published by Pont des Arts. This series was published in 1966 to commemorate the generous donation of Picasso's collages to the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. Pablo Ruiz Picasso is the great genius of contemporary painting. Creator of cubism along with Braque, his capacity for invention and creation places him at the top of world painting. He was born in Malaga, where his father was a professor of drawing and director of the Municipal Museum. The Ruiz Picasso family soon moved to La Coruña, and from there to Barcelona, where the young Pablo began his artistic studies at the Provincial School of Fine Arts (1895). Although the school's style is totally academic, the painter soon comes into contact with modernist groups that change his form of expression. Only two years later, in 1897, Picasso had his first individual exhibition, in the café "Els Quatre Gats". Paris was to become Pablo's great goal and in 1900 he moved to the French capital for a brief period of time. When he returned to Barcelona, he began to work on a series of works in which the influences of all the artists he had known or whose work he had seen could be seen. He is a sponge that absorbs everything but retains nothing; he is searching for a personal style. Between 1901 and 1907 he developed the Blue and Pink Stages, characterized by the use of these colors and by their subject matter with sordid, isolated figures, with gestures of sorrow and suffering. The painting of these early years of the twentieth century was undergoing continuous changes and Picasso could not remain on the sidelines. He became interested in Cézanne, and based on his example he developed a new pictorial formula together with his friend Braque: Cubism. But Picasso did not stop there and in 1912 he practiced collage in painting; from that moment on, anything goes, imagination became the master of art. Picasso is the great revolutionary and when all painters are interested in Cubism, he is concerned with the classicism of Ingres. The surrealist movement of 1925 did not catch him unawares and, although he did not participate openly, it served as an element of rupture with the previous, introducing in his work distorted figures with great force and not exempt of rage and fury. As with Goya, Picasso was also greatly influenced by his personal and social situation at the time of his work. His relationships with women, often tumultuous, will seriously affect his work. However, what had the greatest impact on Picasso was the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the bombing of Guernica, which led to the creation of the most famous work of contemporary art. Paris was his refuge for a long time, but the last years of his life were spent in the south of France, working in a very personal style, with vivid colors and strange shapes. Picasso is represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London or the Reina Sofia in Madrid.