15 Things about Pablo Picasso 1. His birth name has 23 words. It’s Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. 2. Picasso was amazingly prolific. Estimates vary widely, but he created at least 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and works of art in other media. 3. Hidden paintings of Picasso have been found by X-raying canvases. He often painted over paintings if he didn’t like the composition. For example, underneath his La Coiffure painting, there are three other finished works. 4. Gertrude Stein was a patron of Picasso, supporting him during his experiments with primitive style of painting. Stein would sit 90 times for a portrait of her that Picasso painted. 5. Able to draw amazingly well from a young age, some say Picasso’s first word was “piz” which was his way to say “lápiz,” the Spanish word for pencil. 6. Picasso wasn’t a good student and often got into trouble. But he liked it. When sent to detention, he could continue to draw, uninterrupted by classwork. 7. A member of the Communist Party, Picasso received the International Lenin Peace Prize in 1950 and 1961. 8. Picasso was admitted to the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain, when he was only 13 years old. He found class too structured and would instead wander the city, drawing the people he found in Barcelona streets. 9. Picasso made a few cameo appearances in films, but always as himself. One of the most notable cinema appearances of Picasso was in Jean Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus. 10. For many of his paintings, Picasso used common house paint. 11. Picasso’s Blue Period, which is recognized as running from 1901-1904, was influenced by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas and a trip through Spain. 12. Called the Chicago Picasso, the 50-foot sculpture Picasso donated to the city was never explained. Some speculate it could be a woman, horse, or bird. 13. More of Picasso’s paintings have been stolen than any other major artist. According to reports, more than 550 of his paintings are officially registered as stolen. 14. The artist’s last words, which he said 40 years ago: “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more.” 15. Picasso didn’t leave a will. So his estate tax to the French state was paid with artwork that today forms the core of the collection at the Musee Picasso in Paris.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 12:02:56 +0000
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