Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Picasso

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

He has been called the most famous artist of the 20th century. His work single-handedly defined an artistic style. He was more loved and criticized than any other artist in history. He created over 20,000 works, and legend says that he could pay for a meal with just his signature. Learn more about Pablo Picasso, Spains greatest artist, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He has been called the most famous artist of the 20th century. His work single-handedly defined in artistic style. He was more loved and criticized than any other artist in the world. He created over 20,000 works, and legend says he could pay for a meal with just his signature. Learn more about Pablo Picasso, Spain's greatest artist, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by the tourist office of Spain. Spain isn't just the home of the world's most famous painter, Pablo Picasso. It was and is the home to many of the world's greatest artists across many different mediums.

Chefs Farand, Adria, and Joan Roka have both had restaurants named the best in the world. Painter, Salvador Dali, El Greco, and Francisco Goya all hailed from Spain. Architects Anton Gaudi and Santiago Calatrava, Spanish. Actors Antonio Benderas, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, and Benicchio del Toro, all come from Spain. director Pedro Almodovar as well as singers Enrique and Julio Anglicius and opera star Placio Domingo all come from Spain. You can start researching your dream trip to Spain today by visiting Spain. Info, where you can get everything you need to know to plan your Spanish adventure. To begin any discussion on Picasso, you first have to start with his full name. The full name of the artist known as Picasso, given to him at birth, is Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paola Juan Napamenco Maria de Los Remi.

The name of Cypriano de la Santisma Trinidad, Ruiz, and Picasso. The name Pacaso is actually an Italian name that comes from his mother. Early in his career, he was playing around with different names. He tried Pecas and Picasso, which were variations of his mother's and father's name. He avoided his father's surname of Ruiz just because it was too common in Spain. He didn't think Pablo Ruiz would stand out. He also may have been superstitious. His father was a failed painter, and he didn't want to use the same name he did for his work.

He explained the decision to use the name to Hungarian artist George Brazzi. He said, quote, Picasso was stranger, more resonant than Ruiz. Do you know what appealed to me about that name? Well, it was undoubtedly the double S, which is fairly unusual in Spain. Picasso is of Italian origin, as you know. And the name a person bears or adopts has importance. Can you imagine me calling myself Ruiz, Pablo Ruiz, Diego Jose Ruiz, or Juan Nepomeneke Ruiz? end quote. Well, he had a point. So the artist we call Picasso was born on October 25th, 1881, in Molloga in Andalusia. His birth was difficult, and the midwife who delivered him actually thought he was still born. As mentioned before, his father was a failed painter who mostly earned money teaching art and serving as a curator for a museum. He did excel in teaching art inso far as one of his pupils was his son. Picasso was taking lessons with his father at the age of seven,

by the age of nine he had completed his first painting. Called Le Picador, it is a painting of a man riding a horse in a bullfight. To be fair, it does not look at all like something a nine-year-old would create. Compare this to what most kids have up in the refrigerator, and you'll see a huge difference. When he was 13, his family moved to Barcelona, where he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts, where his father had gotten a job. His father persuaded the school to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. The testing usually took a month and was for students much older than he was. Picasso finished the test in a week and was admitted. At 16, he was sent to Spain's top art college, Madrid's Real Academia de Beias Artes de San Fernando.

He wasn't a great student. He didn't care much for formal study and was really only interested in art. However, in Madrid, he had access to museums with the works of great masters, which would influence his career. Here is where I'm going to start to run into problems. Picasso was a painter, and this is a podcast. To really understand paintings, you have to see them. And podcasts are an audio medium. So I encourage you to actually go and check out some of the works I'll be referencing in this episode. It'll clarify everything. So if you only think of Picasso as a cubist painter, there is a lot more to him than that. Perhaps more than any other artist, his style changed many times over his life and changed dramatically. Around the turn of the century, Picasso

became a young man and began traveling and experiencing more, which changed his artistic style. Prior to 1900, his art was more realistic than anything else. In 1900, he traveled to Paris for the first time, which was the center of the art world in Europe, and soon after, he began what was known as his blue period. His paintings from this period are known for their use of the color blue and bluish greens. Many of the figures in the paintings are gaunt, and the overall mood is somewhat depressing. His blue period lasted from 2001 to 1904. From 1904 to 1906, he entered his rose period,

where he painted images with warmer colors that were less somber and more light. From 1907 and 1909, he began to create work that most people would start to think of as a Picasso. Known as his African period, his paintings used more angular images which were inspired by African sculptures he saw in exhibition. One of his most famous paintings, the young ladies of Avignon, came from this period and is currently in the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many historians call this period a proto-Cubis period. From 1909 to 1990, he began his Cubism period, which is probably what he's best known for. Cubism is a style that takes geometric elements and assembles them together in a type of collage. In fact, he may have cut up images from magazines to experiment with this style.

In the 1920s, he changed his style yet again when he began experimenting with neoclassicism and surrealism. In the 1930s, as Picasso entered into his 50s, he didn't really adhere to any one style. He changed his styles and combined elements from different styles. He also started to become extremely prolific. It is estimated that over the course of his life, he created approximately 147,000, 800 works of art. This included 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics, and 34,000 illustrations. He also dabbled in writing, having written over 300 poems and two plays. Much of this was all done at the tail end of his career.

The stories about Picasso are almost as famous as his art. In 1913, he was accused of stealing the Mona Lisa. Listen to my episode about the Mona Lisa for more about this story, but basically he was accused by a police officer in Paris who just didn't like modern artist and assumed that only a modern artist who hated classical art could have stolen it. He was often photographed wearing a black and white striped shirt. That shirt was known as a Breton striped shirt and was the uniform of the French semen in Brittany. It had exactly 21 stripes, which represented the 21 victories of Napoleon.

Coco Chanel brought it back in 1917, and that was when Picasso started wearing it. In his later life, rumors floated around that he would often pay for his meals by just signing his name or doing a quick drawing. He once refused to do so saying, quote, I'm buying a meal, not the whole restaurant, unquote. In another anecdote, one of his fans in Paris asked him to draw a doodle on a piece of paper. Picasso then said, that will be $30,000. What, the fan replied? That only took five seconds.

No, Picasso said. That took a lifetime. Picasso was famous for being a ladies man. Technically, he was only married twice, but he had many affairs and mistresses. One of his most famous affairs was with Marie-Therese Walter. In 1927, when he was 45, he noticed her on the street and approached her and said, quote, Miss, you have an interesting face. I would like to do your portrait. I am Picasso, unquote. Which you have to admit is a great pickup line. She was only 17, and had never heard of him,

but they ended up spending years together and actually had a child. Three of Picasso's children are still alive, as is one of his ex-wives. Francois Gillo is still around at the age of 99, and painting in her son, studio in New York City. Perhaps his most famous work is Gernica. It's an enormous wall-sized painting, which was done in the Cuba style in 1937. It was created after the bombing of the Basque City of Gernica by German and Italian forces on behest of the Spanish government.

He lived in Paris during the German occupation during World War II. Once a German officer came to his apartment and saw a photo of the painting. When he asked Picasso, did you do this? Picasso replied, no, you did. In 1939, Gernica was sent to the United States for safekeeping, and Picasso requested it not be brought back to Spain until democracy was restored. It was returned to Spain in 1981, and today is on display at the Museo Renio Sophia in Madrid. Picasso became the first and only living artist to have a showing in the main gallery of the Louvre in Paris. It was in celebration of his

90th birthday. Picasso passed away in 1973 at the age of 91. He was probably one of the first celebrity artists of the modern world. Many notable artists who predated Picasso often died in obscurity and didn't become famous until after their deaths. Picasso died with a net worth estimated to be around $500 million. Today, several of his paintings have sold for over $100 million each. He is unquestionably one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. As he himself said, quote, When I was a child, my mother said to me, if you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as a pope.

Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackle. Associate producer is Thor Thompson. Today's five-star review comes from Podcast Republic. Listener Ryan Harris writes, I'm so glad I stumbled upon this show. As I love the history of things and also trivia, it is phenomenal. Short and to the point.

I have binged the first 100 episodes in just three days while at work. can't wait for more. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. That is an amazing review. And thanks to all of you who've left reviews. Remember, if you leave a five-star review, you too can have your review read on the show.