Pablo Picasso: 10 facts about the renowned Spanish artist

1. How many works of art did Picasso create in his lifetime?

Estimates vary, and it depends how you define a work of art. According to some sources, the Spanish painter and sculptor created some 50,000 works, amounting to around two per day throughout the course of his adult life. That's including paintings, prints, book illustrations, ceramics and more.

No other artist of his generation was so productive, even into old age. Picasso worked up until the day he died at age 91.

2. How old was Pablo Picasso when he painted his very first picture?

His first known painting was an oil painting: "El picador amarillo" (The Yellow Bullfighter) or "El pequeno picador" (The Little Bullfighter), inspired by a visit to a bullfight. At that time Pablo Ruiz Picasso was only nine years old. He came from an art-loving family and his father was also a painter.

Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain, a city with a centuries-old art tradition. His father taught at an art school. There were painting materials everywhere at home. His father recognized the "child prodigy" in him and honed his academic drawing early on.

3. Did Pablo Picasso train as an artist?

In 1892, the talented Pablo was accepted at the Malaga School of Art. In addition to normal school lessons, young Pablo used every free minute to paint and draw and quickly qualified for higher education.

After high school, he transferred to the art academy in Barcelona, and shortly thereafter to the renowned San Fernando Academy in Madrid. But the young painter did not like the teaching methods. After only half a year, he left the institute, and from then on was self-taught.

He quenched his thirst for knowledge in museums, salons and studios, studied the techniques of other artists and absorbed everything that arose around him in the form of new art, literature and music.

4. How did he become known by the mononym 'Picasso?'

In the beginning, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Picasso is his mother's maiden name) still signed his full name on paintings. From 1900 he began signing his paintings just with the word "Picasso." At that time he was still living and working in Barcelona. It was not until 1904 that he moved into a studio in Paris.

Later, his last name became synonymous with great art and his gestural, daring painting and drawing technique. In the beginning, his paintings were still strongly colored and almost garish. The talented young Spaniard wanted to attract attention at any price. Picasso's large ego drove him to tremendous productivity.

5. What was Picasso's full family name?

Picasso came from a middle-class family. With his two younger sisters, Pablo grew up in an educated environment. It was a tradition in the family to give the children many illustrious names. Picasso's full name was: Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Crispiano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

6. What are Picasso's most famous works?

With the "Demoiselles d'Avignon" Picasso created the first cubist painting — an abstract art style — and revolutionized art history. The unclothed women he depicted are no longer seen from just one perspective, but from several angles at once.

Picasso also made his mark in his second masterpiece, dated 1937. Shortly after the attack by the Nazi Condor Legion on the small village of Guernica (Gernika in Basque) in the Basque Country, he dedicated the gigantic canvas for the World's Fair in Paris to the victims of the attack. The anti-war painting is a protest against totalitarianism. Picasso did not want it to return to Spain until the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who seized power in 1939 until his death in 1975. Today it is back in Spain, exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

7. When did Picasso start earning money with his art?

Through the works of what is now known as his "Blue Period" and the subsequent "Pink Period," which lasted until 1904, Picasso became increasingly well-known as a painter in Paris. In 1906 he made the acquaintance of Henri Matisse, the most important French artist at the time, who provided him with numerous contacts.

Through him, Picasso also met Ambroise Vollard, who bought all the paintings of his "Pink Period" from him and made him financially secure for the first time. Later, the German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, himself a celebrity in the art world, made some purchases, helping Picasso become one of the most expensive artists of the 20th century.

Kahnweiler also arranged the sale of one of Picasso's key works — the large painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." In addition to Picasso, the enterprising German-French gallery owner also signed up the painters George Braque, Juan Gris and Ferdinand Leger, but in return forbade all of them to participate in the Paris salons and official exhibitions. As a result of his new found wealth, Picasso could finally afford a new apartment and extensive travel.

8. How much is the most valuable painting by Picasso worth?

In 2015 in New York, "Les Femmes d'Alger" (The Women of Algiers) fetched $179.4 million (€164.7 million), making it a record fee for any painting by Picasso.

The large painting is the final one in a series painted between 1954 and 1955 was sold at Christie's auction house.

The entire series was bought in 1956 by Victor and Sally Ganz from the Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris for $212,500 (around $2 million in today's money).

9. How old was Picasso when he painted his last picture?

Though Picasso's last well known self-portrait was completed a little less than a year before his death, he actually worked up until the day he died, aged 91, on April 8, 1973, in his villa Notre-Dame-de Vie on the Cote d'Azur.

In the last active years of his life as a painter, Picasso devoted himself increasingly to delicate, small-scale still lifes and the interior of his penultimate domicile, the "Villa La Californie" in southern France.

There he lived in seclusion with his second wife Jacqueline, who largely shielded him from the outside world and his other children, and their daughter Catherine. He had long since distanced himself from the bustling art scene in Paris and the centers of the international art world, where he was being celebrated as the "genius of the century."

10 What did Picasso bequeath to his heirs and to posterity?

The artist was survived by four children from three different women and eight grandchildren.

Soon after Picasso's death, a bitter legal dispute broke out between the heirs. The family relationships were complicated. Picasso was officially married twice.

His children from his relationship with Francoise Gilot — the photographer Claude Picasso and the designer Paloma Picasso — as well as his grandchildren from his legitimate son — Paulo Picasso (1921-1975) — fought bitterly over their share of the vast inheritance.

In 1976, the material assets left behind by Picasso were estimated at 3.75 billion French Francs (about €696 million, $757 million). This included houses, real estate, studios, various properties and Picasso's own private art collection with valuable paintings by artists he befriended or greatly admired, such as Matisse, Miro, Modigliani, Cezanne and Van Gogh.

The artistic estate of the famous Spanish painter was estimated at a value of 1.275 billion francs. It included: 1,885 paintings, 7,089 drawings, 19,134 graphics, 3,222 ceramic works, 1,228 sculptures and objects, as well as 175 sketchbooks with about 7,000 drawings, which Picasso often made as preliminary sketches for larger works.

His paintings, drawings and sculptures became the foundation of the Picasso Museum in Paris, which opened in 1985 — where to this day tourists from all over the globe come to marvel at his works of art.

This article was originally written and published in German on March 13, 2019. This is an updated version to commemorate Picasso's 50th death anniversary this year.