Pablo Picasso (pah-blow pee-cah-so) was born in Malaga, Spain. He did his first painting at the age of eight. One day his father, a painter and teacher, came home to a surprise: his young son had finished a portrait. After examining the work, Pablo's father gave the boy all his art materials. So great was Pablo's work that his father vowed never to paint again.

Picasso went to Paris in 1904 to live and work. There he met other artists and writers who gathered to talk about what art was, what it could be, and what it should be. The creative climate encouraged Picasso to develop a new style, which he called Cubism. Combining his appreciation of African masks with artist Paul Cézanne's insistence that "everything in nature is made up of squares, cylinders, and cubes," Picasso simplified his subjects into geometric forms.

However, Picasso did not merely show geometry in his work. His aim was to shock his viewers into visual awareness.

Picasso's artistic intensity drove him to go beyond oil painting and experiment with all media, discovering new forms and new ideas. Because Picasso accepted uncertainty in his work, it developed in a unique and innovative manner.

In his long and full life, Pablo Picasso passed through many different styles. For a time he created the fractured images that were the hallmark of the Cubist movement. He later returned to painting the human figure.