Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) was born in Málaga, Spain, on October 25, 1881. The son of José Ruiz Blasco and Maria Picasso y López, he showed his talent for the arts from a young age. His early drawings depicted bullfights. In 1896, at the age of 15, he moved with his family to Barcelona. That same year, his painting “First Communion” was accepted by the Municipal Exhibition of Barcelona. The painting “Two Ducks” was sent by his father to an exhibition in Málaga, earning the painter his first official award.
In Paris, Pablo Picasso was influenced by the Impressionist style and began to adopt it in his works, with the typical brushstroke of pure pigment instead of soft modeling, as seen in the work “The Flower Sellers” (1901).
Suddenly, his work became monochromatic. Blue began to invade his canvases, representing the blue of sadness, with the melancholic portraits of his “Blue Period,” such as in the painting “The Old Guitarist.” Gradually, Picasso freed himself from the melancholic Blue Period and entered the “Pink Period.” In this phase, the main themes are circus figures and women, as seen in “The Young Harlequin,” “The Young Man with a Pipe,” and “The Family of Saltimbanques.”
In 1906, Pablo Picasso began working on the canvas “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” A work influenced by African tribal art. It was the starting point for the research that would result in “Cubism,” which 
along with Georges Braque sought new answers to the question of depicting the three-dimensional real world on a flat canvas.
The initial works of “Analytical Cubism,” as they are known, generally depict single figures or still lifes using a limited range of gray and brown tones, where the figures are deconstructed and reorganized, as in the painting “Nude.” The next step is “Synthetic Cubism,” when letters and words appear in the paintings, as in “The Aficionado.”
In 1917, Picasso created the scenery for the Russian ballet.
In 1925, he participated in the first surrealist exhibition. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso began painting the enormous mural in Impressionist style “Guernica.” The work was exhibited in the Spanish pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris. It is currently displayed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
His last paintings were executed with vigor in a simplistic style, sometimes inspired by famous works of Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Monet. He died in 1973 in a region near Cannes, France.
Source: www.ebiografia.com, by Dilva Frazão