picaso

Born 25 October 1881 in Malága, Spain, Picasso was a prodigy who could draw before he could speak. "My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children's drawings," he wrote. "I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naivety. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me" (Walther 1993, 8). His parents recognized their son's talents and encouraged him in his artistic ambitions. He received his formal training first from his father, who was an art teacher at the School of Fine Arts in La Coruña (1892–1895), and later at "La Lonja" school of art in Barcelona (1895–1897) and the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid (1897–1898). During these formative years he rapidly mastered the painting techniques of the ancient and Spanish masters, astonishing his teachers with phenomenal accuracy. Picasso would soon cast off the traditional painting techniques he perfected during these early years, but he would later return to them, rearranging and mixing traditional techniques with his own aesthetic innovations.




picasso