Van Rijn Rembrandt:

Born in Leiden, Netherlands in 1606, Rembrandt Harmenszoon

van Rijn attended elementary school from 1612 to 1616 and then
attended the Latin School in Leiden, where he partook in biblical
studies and lessons on the classics. It is unclear whether
Rembrandt completed his studies at the Latin School, but one
account claims that he was removed from school early and sent
to be trained as a painter at his own request. From 1620 to either
1624 or 1625, Rembrandt trained as an artist under two masters.
His first was painter Jacob van Swanenburgh (15711638), with
whom he studied for about three years. Under van Swanenburgh,
Rembrandt would have learned basic artistic skills. Van
Swanenburgh specialized in scenes of hell and the underworld,
and his ability to paint fire and the way its light reflects on
surrounding objects was likely an influence on Rembrandts later
work. Rembrandt's second teacher was Amsterdams Pieter
Lastman (15831633), who was a well-known history painter and
likely helped Rembrandt master the genre, which included placing
figures from biblical, historical and allegorical scenes in complex
settings. Rembrandt was a 17th century painter and etcher whose
work came to dominate what has since been named the Dutch
Golden Age. One of the most revered artists of all time,
Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are seen in his portraits
of his contemporaries, illustrations of biblical scenes and selfportraits as well as his innovative etchings and use of shadow and
light.

The Leiden Period (16251631)

In 1625, Rembrandt settled back in Leiden, now a master in his
own right, and over the next six years he laid the foundations for
his life's work. It was during this time that Lastman's influence
was most noticeable, as in several instances Rembrandt
deconstructed his former master's compositions and reassembled
them into his own, a practice carried on by Rembrandt's own
pupils later on. Rembrandts paintings created at this time were
generally small but rich in detail; religious and allegorical themes
were prominent. Rembrandt also worked on his first etchings
(1626) in Leiden, and his eventual international fame would rely
on the widespread dissemination of these works. Diverging from
his contemporaries, Rembrandt endowed his etchings with a
painterly quality achieved through suggestive handling of light
and dark. Rembrandt's style soon took an innovative turn
involving his use of light. His new style left large areas of his
paintings obscured in shadow; through his interpretation,
illumination grew rapidly weaker as it extended into the painting,
creating spots of brightness and pockets of deep darkness. In this
vein, in 1629 Rembrandt completed Judas
Repentant and Returning the Pieces of Silver, among others,
works that further evidence his interest in the handling of light.
Another example is his Peter and Paul Disputing (1628), in which

the paintings lighted elements are clustered together and

surrounded by clusters of darker tones, drawing the viewer's eye
to a general focal point before moving in to observe the details
within. Starting in 1628, Rembrandt took on students, and over
the years his fame attracted many young artists seeking to learn
at his side. Only an estimate of the number of his pupils can be
made, since official registers of trainees have been lost, but it is
believed that over the course of his career he had fifty or so
students.

The First Amsterdam Period (16311636)

Rembrandt began to do business in 1631 with Hendrick
Uylenburgh, an Amsterdam entrepreneur who had a workshop
that created portraits and restored paintings, among other
activities. Rembrandt either commuted from Leiden to Amsterdam
or moved to Amsterdam at this stage. He began to paint
dramatic, large-scale biblical and mythological scenes using his
high-contrast method of light and dark, such as The Blinding of
Samson (1636) and Dana(1636). (Despite his predilection for
biblical imagery, it is unknown if Rembrandt belonged to any
religious community.) In Amsterdam, he also painted numerous
commissioned portraits with the help of various assistants in
Uylenburghs shop. Rembrandt produced much more energetic
works than those created by the portrait artists so prevalent in
Amsterdam at the time, and he received numerous commissions
despite his questionable ability to capture the likeness of his
subject. To this point, Constantijn Huygens, a Dutch diplomat,
mocked a portrait Rembrandt had done of one of his friends for its

lack of verisimilitude, and Rembrandt's self-portraitures contained

noticeable physiognomic differences from one image to the next.

The Third Amsterdam Period (16431658)

In the 10 years following the unveiling of The Night Watch,
Rembrandt's overall artistic output diminished drastically and he
produced no painted portraits; either he received no portrait
commissions or he stopped accepting such commissions.
Speculation about what happened after The Night Watchhas
contributed to the "Rembrandt myth," according to which the
artist became largely misunderstood and was ignored. Often
blamed for Rembrandt's supposed downfall are the death of his
wife and the supposed rejection of The Night Watch by those who
commissioned it. But modern research has found no evidence that
the painting was rejected or that Rembrandt experienced deep
devastation upon his wife's death. There is also no evidence that
he was ever "ignored," although he was often the target of his
contemporary critics' barbs. It has been put forth that
Rembrandt's crisis may have been an artistic one, that he had
seen his methods stretched to their practical limits. And the
variations in his few paintings from 1642 to 1652the period that

marks the beginning of what is usually referred to as Rembrandt's

"late style"might be seen as a sign that he was searching for a
new way forward.

Vincent van Gogh:

was born Vincent Willem van Gogh on March 30, 1853, in GrootZundert, Netherlands. His father, Theodorus van Gogh, was an
austere country minister, and his mother, Anna Cornelia
Carbentus, was a moody artist whose love of nature, drawing and
watercolors was transferred to her son. Van Gogh was born
exactly one year after his parents' first son, also named Vincent,
was stillborn. At a young agehis name and birthdate already
etched on his dead brother's headstonevan Gogh was
melancholy.
At age 15, van Gogh's family was struggling financially, and he
was forced to leave school and go to work. He got a job at his
Uncle Cornelis' art dealership, Goupil & Cie., a firm of art dealers
in The Hague. By this time, van Gogh was fluent in French,
German and English, as well as his native Dutch. In June of 1873,
van Gogh was transferred to the Groupil Gallery in London. There,
he fell in love with English culture. He visited art galleries in his
spare time, and also became a fan of the writings of Charles

Dickens and George Eliot. He also fell in love with his landlady's
daughter, Eugenie Loyer. When she rejected his marriage
proposal, van Gogh suffered a breakdown. He threw away all his
books except for the Bible, and devoted his life to God. He
became angry with people at work, telling customers not to buy
the "worthless art," and was eventually fired. Van Gogh then
taught in a Methodist boys' school, and also preached to the
congregation. Although raised in a religious family, it wasn't until
this time that he seriously began to consider devoting his life to
the church. Hoping to become a minister, he prepared to take the
entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. After a
year of studying diligently, he refused to take the Latin exams,
calling Latin a "dead language" of poor people, and was
subsequently denied entrance.
The same thing happened at the Church of Belgium: In the winter
of 1878, van Gogh volunteered to move to an impoverished coal
mine in the south of Belgium, a place where preachers were
usually sent as punishment. He preached and ministered to the
sick, and also drew pictures of the miners and their families, who
called him "Christ of the Coal Mines." The evangelical committees
were not as pleased. They disagreed with van Gogh's lifestyle,
which had begun to take on a tone of martyrdom. They refused to
renew van Gogh's contract, and he was forced to find another
occupation. In the fall of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to
Brussels and become an artist. Though he had no formal art
training, his younger brother Theo, who worked as an art dealer,
offered to support van Gogh financially. He began taking lessons

on his own, studying books like Travaux des champs by JeanFranois Millet and Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue. Van Gogh
had a catastrophic love life. He was attracted to women in
trouble, thinking he could help them. His cousin, Kate, was
recently widowed, and when van Gogh fell in love with her, she
was repulsed and fled to her home in Amsterdam. He then moved
to The Hague and fell in love with Clasina Maria Hoornik, an
alcoholic prostitute. She became his companion, mistress and
model. When Hoornik went back to prostitution, van Gogh
became utterly depressed. In 1882, his family threatened to cut
off his money unless he left Hoornik and The Hague. Van Gogh left
in mid-September of that year to travel to Drenthe, a somewhat
desolate district in the Netherlands. For the next six weeks, he
lived a nomadic life, moving throughout the region while drawing
and painting the landscape and its people.

Artist:
Van Gogh's art helped him stay emotionally balanced. In 1885, he
began work on what is considered to be his first masterpiece,
"Potato Eaters." His brother, Theo, by this time living in Paris,
believed the painting would not be well-received in the French
capital, where impressionism had become the trend.
Nevertheless, van Gogh decided to move to Paris, and showed up
at Theo's house uninvited. In March 1886, Theo welcomed his
brother into his small apartment. In Paris, van Gogh first saw
impressionist art, and he was inspired by the color and light. He
began studying with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and

others. To save money, he and his friends posed for each other
instead of hiring models. Van Gogh was passionate, and he
argued with other painters about their works, alienating those
who became tired of his bickering. Van Gogh became influenced
by Japanese art and began studying eastern philosophy to
enhance his art and life. He dreamed of traveling there, but was
told by Toulouse-Lautrec that the light in the village of Arles was
just like the light in Japan. In February 1888, van Gogh boarded a
train to the south of France. He moved into the "little yellow
house" and spent his money on paint rather than food. He lived
on coffee, bread and absinthe, and found himself feeling sick and
strange. Before long, it became apparent that in addition to
suffering from physical illness, his psychological health was
declining; around this time, he is known to have sipped on
turpentine and eaten paint. Theo was worried, and offered Paul
Gauguin money to go watch over van Gogh in Arles. Within a
month, van Gogh and Gauguin were arguing constantly, and one
night, Gauguin walked out. Van Gogh followed him, and when
Gauguin turned around, he saw van Gogh holding a razor in his
hand. Hours later, van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for
a prostitute named Rachel. With blood pouring from his hand, he
offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully." The
police found him in his room the next morning, and admitted him
to the Htel-Dieu hospital. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see
van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and having violent
seizures. The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and
would be taken good care of, and on January 7, 1889, van Gogh

was released from the hospital. He was alone and depressed. For
hope, he turned to painting and nature, but could not find peace
and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house
during the day and return to the hospital at night. After the people
of Arles signed a petition saying that van Gogh was dangerous, he
decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in SaintRmy-de-Provence. On May 8, 1889, he began painting in the
hospital gardens. In November 1889, he was invited to exhibit his
paintings in Brussels. He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and
"Starry Night."

Death and Legacy:

On January 31, 1890, Theo and his wife, Johanna, gave birth to a
boy and named him after van Gogh. Around this time, Theo sold
van Gogh's "The Red Vineyards" painting for 400 francs. Also
around this time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20
miles north of Paris, agreed to take van Gogh as his patient. Van

Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room. In May 1890, Theo and
his family visited van Gogh, and Theo spoke to his brother about
needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh became
distraught about his future, thinking that Theo meant he was no
longer interested in selling his art. On July 27, 1890, van Gogh
went out to paint in the morning as usual, but he carried a loaded
pistol. He shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him.
He was found bleeding in his room. Van Gogh was taken to a
nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find
his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. They spent the
next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked
Theo to take him home. On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died
in the arms of his brother. He was 37 years old. Theo, who was
suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died
six months later in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but
in 1914 Theo's wife, Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of
van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in the Auvers
cemetery next to Vincent. Johanna then collected as many of van
Gogh's paintings as she could, but discovered that many of them
had been destroyed or lost, van Gogh's own mother having
thrown away crates full of his art. On March 17, 1901, 71 of van
Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his fame
subsequently grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to
see her son hailed as an artist and a genius. Today, Vincent van
Gogh is considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt.
He completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil
paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and

sketches. Several of his paintings rank among the most expensive

in the world; "Irises" sold for a record $53.9 million, and his
"Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million. After more than 100
years since van Gogh's death, more of his artwork was released. A
painting of a landscape entitled "Sunset at Montmajour" was
discovered and unveiled by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
in September 2013. Before coming under the possession of the
Van Gogh Museum, a Norwegian industrialist owned the painting
and stored it away in his attic, having thought that it wasn't
authentic. The painting is believed to have been created by van
Gogh in 1888around the same time that his artwork
"Sunflowers" was madejust two years before his death.

Raphael Sanzio:
Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born

Raffaello Sanzio on April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy. At the time,

Urbino was a cultural center that encouraged the Arts. Raphaels
father, Giovanni Santi, was a painter for the Duke of Urbino,
Federigo da Montefeltro. Giovanni taught the young Raphael basic
painting techniques and exposed him to the principles of
humanistic philosophy at the Duke of Urbinos court.
In 1494, when Raphael was just 11 years old, Giovanni died.
Raphael then took over the daunting task of managing his fathers
workshop. His success in this role quickly surpassed his fathers;
Raphael was soon considered one of the finest painters in town.
As a teen, he was even commissioned to paint for the Church of
San Nicola in the neighboring town of Castello.
In 1500 a master painter named Pietro Vannunci, otherwise
known as Perugino, invited Raphael to become his apprentice in
Perugia, in the Umbria region of central Italy. In Perugia, Perugino
was working on frescoes at the Collegio del Cambia. The
apprenticeship lasted four years and provided Raphael with the
opportunity to gain both knowledge and hands-on experience.
During this period, Raphael developed his own unique painting
style, as exhibited in the religious works the Mond
Crucifixion (circa 1502),The Three Graces (circa 1503), The
Knights Dream (1504) and the Oddi altarpiece, Marriage of the
Virgin, completed in 1504.

Paintings:
In 1504, Raphael left his apprenticeship with Perugino and moved
to Florence, where he was heavily influenced by the works of the
Italian painters Fra Bartolommeo, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo

and Masaccio. To Raphael, these innovative artists had achieved a

whole new level of depth in their composition. By closely studying
the details of their work, Raphael managed to develop an even
more intricate and expressive personal style than was evident in
his earlier paintings. From 1504 through 1507, Raphael produced
a series of "Madonnas," which extrapolated on Leonardo da Vinci's
works. Raphael's experimentation with this theme culminated in
1507 with his painting, La Belle jardine. That same year, Raphael
created his most ambitious work in Florence, the Entombment,
which was evocative of the ideas that Michelangelo had recently
expressed in his Battle of Cascina. Raphael moved to Rome in
1508 to paint in the Vatican "Stanze" ("Room"), under Pope Julius
IIs patronage. From 1509 to 1511, Raphael toiled over what was
to become one of the Italian High Renaissances most highly
regarded fresco cycles, those located in the Vatican's Stanza della
Segnatura ("Room of the Signatura"). The Stanza della Segnatura
series of frescos include The Triumph of Religion and The School
of Athens. In the fresco cycle, Raphael expressed the humanistic
philosophy that he had learned in the Urbino court as a boy. In the
years to come, Raphael painted an additional fresco cycle for the
Vatican, located in the Stanza d'Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"),
featuringThe Expulsion of Heliodorus, The Miracle of Bolsena, The
Repulse of Attila from Rome and The Liberation of Saint Peter.
During this same time, the ambitious painter produced a
successful series of "Madonna" paintings in his own art studio.
The famed Madonna of the Chair and Sistine Madonna were
among them.

Architecture:
By 1514, Raphael had achieved fame for his work at the Vatican
and was able to hire a crew of assistants to help him finish
painting frescoes in the Stanza dellIncendio, freeing him up to
focus on other projects. While Raphael continued to accept
commissions -- including portraits of popes Julius II and Leo X -and his largest painting on canvas, The
Transfiguration(commissioned in 1517), he had by this time
begun to work on architecture. After architect Donato Bramante
died in 1514, the pope hired Raphael as his chief architect. Under
this appointment, Raphael created the design for a chapel in Sant
Eligio degli Orefici. He also designed Romes Santa Maria del
Popolo Chapel and an area within Saint Peters new basilica.
Raphaels architectural work was not limited to religious buildings.
It also extended to designing palaces. Raphaels architecture
honored the classical sensibilities of his predecessor, Donato
Bramante, and incorporated his use of ornamental details. Such
details would come to define the architectural style of the late
Renaissance and early Baroque periods.

Death and Legacy:

On April 6, 1520, Raphaels 37th birthday, he died suddenly and
unexpectedly of mysterious causes in Rome, Italy. He had been
working on his largest painting on canvas, The
Transfiguration (commissioned in 1517), at the time of his death.
When his funeral mass was held at the Vatican, Raphael's
unfinished Transfiguration was placed on his coffin stand.
Raphaels body was interred at the Pantheon in Rome, Italy.

Following his death, Raphael's movement toward Mannerism

influenced painting styles in Italys advancing Baroque period.
Celebrated for the balanced and harmonious compositions of his
"Madonnas," portraits, frescoes and architecture, Raphael
continues to be widely regarded as the leading artistic figure of
Italian High Renaissance classicism.

Pablo Picasso:
Born on October 25, 1881, in Mlaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso's
gargantuan full name, which honors a variety of relatives and
saints, is Pablo Diego Jos Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno
Mara de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santsima Trinidad Martyr
Patricio Clito Ruz y Picasso. Picasso's mother was Doa Maria
Picasso y Lopez. His father was Don Jos Ruiz Blasco, a painter
and art teacher. A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the
young Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes
that seemed to mark him destined for greatness. "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 the pope,'" he
later recalled. "Instead, I became a painter and wound up as
Picasso."
Though he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a
prodigious talent for drawing at a very young age. According to
legend, his first words were "piz, piz," his childish attempt at
saying "lpiz," the Spanish word for pencil. Picasso's father began
teaching him to draw and paint when he was a child, and by the
time he was 13 years old, his skill level had surpassed his
father's. Soon, Picasso lost all desire to do any schoolwork,

choosing to spend the school days doodling in his notebook

instead. "For being a bad student, I was banished to the
'calaboose,' a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit
on," he later remembered. "I liked it there, because I took along a
sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I could have stayed there
forever, drawing without stopping."
In 1895, when Picasso was 14 years old, he moved with his family
to Barcelona, Spain. where he quickly applied to the city's
prestigious School of Fine Arts. Although the school typically only
accepted students several years his senior, Picasso's entrance
exam was so extraordinary that he was granted an exception and
admitted. Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the School of Fine Arts'
strict rules and formalities, and began skipping class so that he
could roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he
observed.
In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the
Royal Academy of San Fernando. However, he again became
frustrated with his school's singular focus on classical subjects
and techniques. During this time, he wrote to a friend: "They just
go on and on about the same old stuff: Velazquez for painting,
Michelangelo for sculpture." Once again, Picasso began skipping
class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies,
beggars and prostitutes, among other things.
In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd
of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a caf
called El Quatre Gats ("The Four Cats"). Inspired by the anarchists
and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break from

the classical methods in which he had been trained, and began

what would become a lifelong process of experimentation and
innovation.

Blue Period: 'Blue Nude,' 'La Vie' and Other Works:

At the turn of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso moved to Paris,
Francethe cultural center of European artto open his own
studio. Art critics and historians typically break Picasso's adult
career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to
1904 and is called his "Blue Period," after the color that
dominated nearly all of Picasso's paintings over these years.
Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend,
Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and
anguish, almost exclusively in shades of blue and green. Picasso's
most famous paintings from the Blue Period include "Blue Nude,"
"La Vie" and "The Old Guitarist," all three of which were
completed in 1903.
In contemplation of Picasso and his Blue Period, Symbolist writer
and critic Charles Morice once asked, "Is this frighteningly
precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a
masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from
which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?"
Rose Period: 'Gertrude Stein,' 'Two Nudes' and More:

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome the depression that had

previously debilitated him. Not only was he madly in love with a
beautiful model, Fernande Olivier, he was newly prosperous
thanks to the generous patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard.
The artistic manifestation of Picasso's improved spirits was the
introduction of warmer colorsincluding beiges, pinks and reds
in what is known as his "Rose Period" (1904-06). His most famous
paintings from these years include "Family at Saltimbanques"
(1905), "Gertrude Stein" (1905-06) and "Two Nudes" (1906).
Break into Cubism:

In 1907, Pablo Picasso produced a painting unlike anything he or

anyone else had ever painted before, a work that would
profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century: "Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon," a chilling depiction of five nude
prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric
features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. Today,
"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is considered the precursor and
inspiration of Cubism, an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and
his friend and fellow painter, Georges Braque. In Cubist paintings,
objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form,
highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting
them from multiple, simultaneous viewpoints in order to create
physics-defying, collage-like effects. At once destructive and
creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world.
"It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting
fire," Braque said, explaining that he was shocked when he first
viewed Picasso's "Les Demoiselles," but quickly became intrigued
with Cubism, seeing the new style as a revolutionary movement.
French writer and critic Max Jacob, a good friend of both Picasso
and painter Juan Gris, called Cubism "the 'Harbinger Comet' of the
new century," stating, "Cubism is ... a picture for its own sake.
Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality
merely as a means and not as an end." Picasso's early Cubist
paintings, known as his "Analytic Cubist" works, include "Three
Women" (1907), "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" (1909) and "Girl
with Mandolin" (1910). His later Cubist works are distinguished as
"Synthetic Cubism" for moving even further away from artistic
typicalities of the time, creating vast collages out of a great
number of tiny, individual fragments. These paintings include
"Still Life with Chair Caning" (1912), "Card Player" (1913-14) and
"Three Musicians" (1921).
Classical Period The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great
change in Picasso's art. He grew more somber and, once again,
became preoccupied with the depiction of reality. His works
between 1918 and 1927 are categorized as part of his "Classical
Period," a brief return to Realism in a career otherwise dominated
by experimentation. His most interesting and important works
from this period include "Three Women at the Spring" (1921),
"Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race" (1922) and "The

Pipes of Pan" (1923).

Surrealism From 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new
philosophical and cultural movement known as Surrealism, the
artistic manifestation of which was a product of his own Cubism.
Picasso's most well-known Surrealist painting, deemed one of the
greatest paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, during the
Spanish Civil War. After German bombers supporting Francisco
Franco's Nationalist forces carried out a devastating aerial attack
on the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso,
outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, painted
"Guernica." Painted in black, white and grays, the work is a
Surrealist testament to the horrors of war, and features a
minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of
anguish and terror. "Guernica" remains one of the most moving
and powerful anti-war paintings in history.
'Self Portrait Facing Death' and Other Later Works In the aftermath of World
War II, Picasso became more overtly political. He joined the
Communist Party and was twice honored with the International
Lenin Peace Prize, first in 1950 and again in 1961. By this point in
his life, he was also an international celebrity, the world's most
famous living artist. While paparazzi chronicled his every move,
however, few paid attention to his art during this time.
In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism,
Picasso's later paintings display simple, childlike imagery and
crude technique. Touching on the artistic validity of these later
works, Picasso once remarked upon passing a group of school kids
in his old age, "When I was as old as these children, I could draw
like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them."
Picasso created the epitome of his later work, "Self Portrait Facing
Death," using pencil and crayon, a year before his death. The
autobiographical subject, drawn with crude technique, appears as
something between a human and an ape, with a green face and
pink hair. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of
wisdom, fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a
master at the height of his powers.

Death and Legacy

Pablo Picasso continued to create art and maintain an ambitious schedule in his later years,
superstitiously believing that work would keep him alive. He died on April 8, 1973, at the age of
91, in Mougins, France. His legacy, however, has long endured.
Inarguably one of the most celebrated and influential painters of the 20th century, Picasso
continues to garner reverence for his technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound
empathy, and, together, these qualities have distinguished him as a revolutionary artist. Picasso
also remains renowned for endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically
different that his life's work seems to be the product of five or six great artists rather than just
one.
Of his penchant for style diversity, Picasso insisted that his varied work was not indicative of
radical shifts throughout his career, but, rather, of his dedication to objectively evaluating for
each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effect. "Whenever I wanted
to say something, I said it the way I believed I should," he explained. "Different themes
inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or
progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one
wants to express it."

Personal Life
An incorrigible womanizer, Picasso had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses,
muses and prostitutes during his lifetime, marrying only twice. He wed a ballerina named Olga
Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years, parting ways in 1927. In 1961, at
the age of 69, he married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque.
Between marriages, in 1935, Picasso met Dora Maar, a fellow artist, on the set of Jean Renoir's
film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (released in 1936). The two soon embarked upon a partnership
that was both romantic and professional. Their relationship lasted more than a decade, during and
after which time Maar struggled with depression; they parted ways in 1946, three years after
Picasso began having an affair with a woman named Franoise Gilot.
Picasso fathered four children: Paul, Maya, Claude and Paloma.