Picasso

Picasso
The Early Years
1892–1906
n ational gallery of art was h i n g to n
March 30 – July 27, 1997 Bell Atlantic is proud to sponsor this great exhibition

Pablo Picasso’s impact on the history of modern art has been profound. His early development was complex and innovative, constituting a subject of surprising depth. This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Picasso’s art before cubism, from the academic and realist work of his youth to his emergence as a brilliant stylist in late 1906.
Early Youth Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in the Spanish coastal town of Málaga, where his father, José Ruiz Blasco, was an art instructor at a provincial school. Picasso began to draw under his father’s tutelage and studied in various art schools between 1892 and 1897, including academies in Barcelona and Madrid. Working from live models as well as plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture (no. 2), the young artist displayed a precocious command of academic draftsmanship that would be evident throughout his career, later serving as the vehicle for some of his most original work. In addition to academic classicism, Picasso’s stu dent work manifested a less idealized manner of representation in genre subjects and portraiture. The artist executed many family portraits at this time and depictions of local figures such as an old sailor named Salmerón (no. 7), who was hired as a model by Picasso’s wealthy uncle in Málaga. In Madrid Picasso’s art was also shaped by visits to the Prado, no. 2. Study of a Torso,After a Plaster Cast, 1893/1894, Musée Picasso, Paris

no. 7. The Old Fisherman (Salmerón), 1895, Museu de Montserrat, Barcelona

where he studied works by Spanish old masters Velázquez and Ribera as well as by El Greco (the latter’s stylized mannerisms would soon play an important role in Picasso’s work). During this period Picasso produced several large-scale pictures on religious and allegorical themes, which appeared in official exhibitions. At