Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881 and would become one of the 20th century's most influential figures in art. Born to a master of drawing, Jose Ruiz Blasco, Picasso would later take his mother's last name as his own. After his family moved to Barcelona in 1895, Picasso had a brief but intense study at the academy there where his talent as a draftsman was immediately apparent. He held his first one man show at the age of 16, visited the World's Fair in Paris in 1900, and there sold his first works. He soon recognized that the center of the art world at that time was Paris, and he moved there in 1904.

Picasso's work throughout his lifetime has been so varied in style that his works themselves have been divided into stylistic categories. His "Blue Period"(1902-04) was a period in which he created sad images of destitute persons, like the homeless, the colors he used were cool toned and ranging from blues, to dull whites, and grays. Picasso was possibly influenced by various French artists of the time including the Post- Impressionist Henri Toulouse- Lautrec. Some art historians even suspect the influence of the Baroque artist El Greco, for similarities can be found in the emaciated figures and cool color tones. Picasso would certainly have been familiar with the artist for both had Spanish origins.

Eventually the blues gave way to reddish and pink tones, and Picasso entered his "Rose Period" (1905-07). The subjects for these paintings are more optimistic, circus acrobats, youths holding or sitting on horses, clowns, and one of his favorite figures: the harlequin. In both the "Blue" and "Rose" periods, Picasso's superior skills in draftsmanship is clearly evident.

Around the year 1907 Picasso was simultaneously introduced to two sources that would forever change his perception of art. Friend and fellow artist Henri Matisse showed Picasso a collection of intricately carved African tribal masks. These masks proved to have an enormous impact on the artist who had recently been exposed to the late Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne's theorem which stated that everything in nature could be reduced down to basic geometrical forms. Using the forms of the arc, the cube, the cone, the pyramid, the cylinder, the sphere and the line, as well as restraining colors to more neutral tones, Picasso and fellow artist Georges Braque went on to develop one of the first truly innovative styles of the 20th century, "cubism".

Picasso and Braque deliberately abandoned the realistic representation of an object, they threw out the rules of perspective and the illusion of 3-dimensionality in favor of a flattened, superimposed, overlapping, shallow picture plane. In doing this Picasso essentially abandoned all the innovations of the Renaissance. In addition, the representation of light and atmosphere was excluded and color was restricted to a narrow range. By doing this Picasso revolted against both the longstanding tradition of Romanticism as well as the contemporary styles of Impressionism and Fauvism.

Picasso's first successful attempt at this style can be seen in his famous "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon", although it was not a success from the start. At the time the picture was reprehensible to artists and critics alike, and was not exhibited until 1937, some 20 years after it was created. This work is now seen by art critics to be not only the most crucial achievement in Picasso's artistic development, but also the most important single landmark in the history of contemporary painting. With this painting Picasso showed that painting could be conceptual rather than purely visual, and would be the pre-cursor to the movement towards abstaction in painting in the 20th century.

Besides being one of the inventors of the Cubist style, Picasso also introduced a new medium, that of "collage". Picasso began working with pasted papers, especially clipped numerals and letters from journals and wallpaper or imitation wood graining. He then assembled these clippings together into what he called "papiers colles" or "collage".

From the latter part of the 1920's Picasso's work showed a mounting emotional tension, a sense of foreboding and despair. He was preoccupied with the mythological image of the Minotaur, as well as the images of the dying horse, and the weeping woman. These led up to one of the most pivotal paintings of his career : "Guernica". This painting was produced for the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Universielle in Paris in 1937. It was created to express the universal horror at the bombing and destruction of the Basque capital of Guernica.

By the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940, Picasso had already become the best known living painter, his productivity greater then any other artist.

Picasso is usually seen first as a painter; but his contribution to modern sculpture is equally impressive. He began creating his first scupltures during his "Rose" period. His cubism followed into sculpture and he was an influence to all most all modern sculptors of the 20th century.