Pablo Picasso

1881–1973 · Spanish painter & sculptor · co-founder of Cubism

Born in Málaga in 1881 and dead in 1973 at ninety-one, Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, invented constructed sculpture, and co-invented collage — then spent decades refusing to stay inside any one of those styles. He gave comparatively few formal statements about his own work, which is exactly why the 1923 piece in The Arts gets quoted so heavily: it is one of the rare occasions he sat down and explained himself at length. In it he is not being cryptic about art and truth — he is defending Cubism against critics who called it an experiment, and arguing that every school of painting, from the primitives to Ingres, traffics in convincing lies.

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