On October 25, 1881, Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga, Southern Spain to middle-class parents, Don Jose Ruiz y Blasco and Maria Picasso y Lopez. Don Ruiz was an art professor, museum curator, and painter who specialized in natural illustrations of birds and other wildlife. Through Don Ruiz's formal art teaching of the young Picasso at just the age of seven years old, the training that Pablo Picasso received became the catalyst that made him become one of the greatest painters in the modern arts.
Unlike his father, Pablo Picasso shifted away from the realistic rendition of nature to "Symbolism" where works of art were rendered in non-naturalistic, absolute truths with the use of violet and green tones.
Picasso's use of shades of blue and blue-green colors and rendering of people like prostitutes and beggars as frequent subjects became known as "Picasso's Blue Period". Pablo Picasso's painting during this period is evident in a number of his paintings like "La Vie" (1903), "The Blindman's Meal (1903), "Celestina" (1903), "The Frugal Repast" (1904) and "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" (1904).
Picasso's "Rose Period" began when his use of lighter tones and colors like orange and pink frequently featured circus performers. His paintings during this period includes the "Portrait of Gertrude Stein" (1906) and "Au Lapin Agile" (1905).
Picasso's interest in African art and nudity was evident in paintings like "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), "Nude with Raised Arms" (1907), and "Three Women" (1908).
Later on in Picasso's career, his focus shifted to what many consider would be his greatest accomplishment which sets him apart from other painters of the 1900s. Picasso is known for co-founding the "Cubist" movement where objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form like collages. One of Picasso's famous paintings that embodies his "Cubist" ideals is evident in his large canvas titled, "Guernica" (1937). The artwork portrays the inhumanity and brutality of war in the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. When asked what "Guernica" meant to Picasso he said, "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it."
Today, "Guernica" is considered an artistic masterpiece that belongs to some of Spanish's multigeneration iconic artists like El Greco, Goya and Velazquez housed in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain.