Pablo Ruiz Picasso

PABLO RUIZ PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973).
"General Palafox", 1895, copy of Goya's oil painting preserved in the Prado Museum.
Oil on panel.
Attached certificate issued by Maya Ruiz Picasso in 2009.
Attached documents concerning the loan request for exhibition in the exhibition "Picasso. The formation of a genius", held at the Yuely Art Museum of Jianxing City, China.
Attached is a study issued by the Centre d'Art d'Època Moderna (CAEM) of Lleida.
Work published in "Picasso. Blue and white. A Coruña: The birth of a painter", Rubén Ventureira and Elena Pardo, p. 307.
Provenance: Private collection; Previously acquired in Barcelona in the sale and dissolution of the entire property of an important Francoist politician in February 2007.
Measurements: 11 x 15 cm; 50 x 55 cm (frame).

In 1895 Picasso leaves behind A Coruña, the city where he has lived since 1891 because his father is transferred for work reasons, to spend the summer in Malaga, his birthplace. In the impasse of this long journey throughout Spain, the Ruiz Picasso family spends the night in Madrid and takes the opportunity to visit the Prado Museum. Walking through the exquisite corridors of the Spanish art gallery allows the young painter to see for the first time his accumulated treasures: Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera or Goya, among other great masters, fascinate Picasso. The book "Picasso. Blue and White. A Coruña: The birth of a painter" states "One painting perhaps held them back more than the others, a painting that Don José possibly wanted his son to contemplate more closely: Las Meninas by Velázquez". This same publication continues: "What is certain is that other oil paintings by Velázquez and Goya also attracted Pablo's attention to the point of making copies in the museum itself". This is the case of the small oil painting "General Palafox on horseback", a copy of the homonymous painting by Goya in 1814, still kept today in the Prado Museum. In the work under study, Picasso makes a sketch of the military man from Zaragoza, focusing mainly on the figure of the character and leaving the horse in the background. In the portrait, the Captain General of Aragon is wearing his campaign uniform and is leading a cavalry attack. The sketchy but graceful technique of a young Picasso, self-taught until then, stands out, since it was not until the end of that same year when he began his studies at the Llotja de Barcelona.

Creator of cubism together with Braque, Picasso was a turning point in the history of art. He began his studies in 1895, at the Provincial School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and only two years later he had his first individual exhibition, at the café "Els Quatre Gats". After several short stays in Paris, Picasso settled permanently in the French capital in 1904. After his blue and pink periods, developed in the early years of the century, the painter began his geometrical experiments in 1906, during a stay in Lleida. A year later he began to paint "Las señoritas de la calle Avinyó", and in 1909 he came into contact with Braque and began his cubist period. During the second decade he developed his classical period, and created his famous sets for Diaghilev's Russian ballets. In 1936 he was appointed director of the Prado Museum by the Government of the Spanish Republic, and a year later he painted "Guernica". The definitive international recognition will come in 1939, as a result of the retrospective dedicated to him by the MOMA in New York. During the following decades, anthological exhibitions will be dedicated to him all over the world, in Rome, Milan, Paris, Cologne and New York, among many other cities. He is represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London or the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

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