Pablo Picasso was born in 1881 in Spain. Picasso was admitted to the advanced classes at the Royal Academy of Art in Barcelona at 15. After 1900 he spent much time in Paris, remaining there from 1904 to 1947, when he moved to the South of France. In his life Picasso has three main periods of art, the blue period, the red period and his most famous the cubist period.

The first period of Picasso's art was his Blue Period which lasted from 1901 to 1904. During this time he depicted the poor. The period received his name through Picasso's use of blue and other melancholy colors. Some of the greatest art of the century was produced during this time including the picture on the right, a self portrait of Picasso and the picture of the left, a group of poor people named Tragedy

The second of Picasso's three main periods came between 1905 and 1906. Although it only lasted about one year Picasso created many works of art. This period is called the Red Period because he uses lighter colors and greater movement in the pictures creating a happier atmosphere. Also characteristic of this period are that most of the pictures are of circus families like this one of a traveling circus family. In this picture many have speculated that the woman on the bottom right is Picasso's new love and likely cause of the happiness of the Red Period. He also started working on sculpture during this time which he would take up in his later years.

The last and most famous of Picasso's periods is the Cubist Period. This lasted from 1907 when he painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (pictured on left) which depicts 5 prostitutes from different angles all at once which is where cubism got its name. This style of painting was revolutionary as it strayed from the detailed and methodical work of previous artist and tried to show three dimensions in a 2-D plane. Cubsim also reflected the Modernistic view of the time which was a departure from the ideas and conformity of the 20th century. Picasso's cubist style started to change in 1912 when he started making his forms larger and flatter while using lighter colors.

In his later years Picasso moved away from the seriousness of his cubist paintings and went toward a more comical style. He also moved away from the canvas and into the realm of sculpture and ceramics. However he did not stick only to sculpture in his later years, he did thousands of sketches and recreated works of old masters in his own cubist way. He died on April 8th 1973 and his first post-humous show was at the Vatican for the Pope.