8. The Youngest Painter in the World

Why was Picasso regarded as the "youngest" painter even when he was ninety-one years old? Do you appreciate his pictures? The following article may help you understand more about Picasso, one of the world's greatest painters.

Pablo Picasso was born in 1881. So probably you are wondering why we have called him "the youngest painter in the world". When he died, in 1973, he was ninety-one years old. But he still took up his paints and brushes to start a new picture as if he were seeing things for the first time.

That's why we have called him the "youngest" painter. Young people are always trying new things and new ways of doing things. They don't hesitate to attempt one thing after another. Eager to experiment, they welcome new ideas. They are restless and alive and never satisfied. They seek perfection.

Older people often fear change. They know what they can do best. They prefer to repeat their successes, rather than risk failure. They have found their own level in life and don't like to depart from it. We know fairly well what to expect from them.

When he was over ninety this great Spanish painter still lived his life like a young man. He was still restlessly looking for new ideas and new ways to use his artistic materials. No one knew what to expect from him next. No one could be sure what kind of picture he would produce. If he had painted a picture of you it might have looked exactly like you. Or it might have been all lines, squares, circles and strange-coloured shapes. It might not have looked human at all.

Picasso's figures sometimes face two ways at once, with the eyes and nose in odd places. Sometimes they seem to be stretched out of shape or broken. The colours are fierce and unnatural. The title of the picture tells us it is a person but it may look more like a machine.

At such times Picasso was trying to paint what he saw with his mind as well as with his eyes. He put in the side of the face as well as the front. He painted the naked body and the clothes on it at the same time. He often painted it flat, as though it had no depth.

Sometimes he seemed to paint just as a child paints, simply for his own pleasure. He didn't imitate others. "If the subjects I have wanted to express have suggested different ways of expression, I have never hesitated to use them," he said. In other words, he painted his pictures in whatever manner seemed best to him, without considering other people's opinions.

Most painters discover a style of painting that suits them and stick to that, especially if people admire their pictures. As the artist grows older his pictures may alter, but not very much. But Picasso was like a man who had not yet found his own particular style of painting. He was still struggling to find perfect expression for his own uneasy spirit.

The first thing one noticed about him was the look of his large, wide-open eyes. Gertrude Stein, a famous American writer who knew him in his youth, mentioned this hungry look, and one can still see it in pictures of him today. Picasso painted a picture of her in 1906 and the story is an interesting one.

According to Gertrude Stein she visited the painter's studio eighty or ninety times while he painted her picture. While Picasso painted they talked about everything in the world that interested them. Then one day Picasso wiped out the painted head on which he had worked for so long. "When I look at you I can't see you any more!" he remarked.

Picasso went away for the summer. When he returned he went at once to the unfinished picture in the corner of his studio. Quickly he finished the face from memory. He could see the woman's face more clearly in his mind than he could see it when she sat in the studio in front of him.

When people complained to him that the painting of Miss Stein didn't look like her, Picasso would reply, "Too bad. She'll have to arrange to look like the picture." But thirty years later Gertrude Stein said that Picasso's painting of her was the only picture she knew that showed her as she really was.

From Great People of Our Time, ed., Carol Christian,

Macmillan Education, 1977.