From the time of his birth in 1881, Pablo Picasso desired to paint like Rembrandt; thus when he was eight years old, Picasso trained with his father, an art teacher, to learn drawing and painting. Picasso began formal training at the Academy of Arts in Madrid, and in the following years, Picasso's early works, such as The First Communion, were displayed in many exhibitions throughout Spain. These exhibitions allowed Picasso to declare his independence as an artist when he decided to leave school in favor of Paris, France, which was much to his parent's dismay.
Initially, Picasso experimented with divisionism, in which he used the brush's tip to form dots of color, but he entered a doleful time just after his move to Paris when his friend, Casagermas, committed suicide. This event led to Picasso's Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 through 1904. This sorrowful period prompted Picasso to paint works like The Tragedy using variations of blue hues and focusing on depressing subjects to depict a somber tone.
Portrait Pablo Picasso
By 1905, Picasso traded his depressing works for lively and rosy images as seen in Girl with a Goat. His artistic direction changed due to his blossoming relationship with the beautiful Fernande Olivier, his first great love. Picasso's new Rose Period was marked with distinctive pink and beige colors and light and airy subjects, such as circus performers and clowns.
The last significant influence in Picasso's art came from the French painter, Cezanne. Cezanne depicted flattened space in his paintings, and Picasso morphed this idea into a new form of art called Cubism, which enabled artists to view space in geometric forms. This more abstract method enabled Picasso to produce such works as House in a Garden and Fruit in a Vase from 1907 until his death in France in 1973.