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Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Spanish painter. Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain and began art education early on as a pupil of his father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, a drawing professor. He attended La Llotja, a local academy of art and the Royal Academy of San Fernando. He was interested by the teaching at San Fernando and began artistic exploration on his own, particularly influenced by the works of Goya. He went to Paris and discovered the use of brilliant color, eventually returned to Spain with Casagemas, and then took off for Madrid to work as art editor for the journal Arte Joven. During this period, Casagemas committed suicide, which profoundly affected Picasso and stimulated his expressiveness in his Blue Period works. He then moved permanently to Paris (1904) and began working on many of his most famous paintings such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and later worked with Braque (1909-12) to develop the style of Analytical Cubism