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viking.com | 45 S P R I N G 2 0 2 6 Born in Spain but profoundly shaped by France, Pablo Picasso redefined modern art through a career of experimentation and reinvention. Pablo Picasso ARTIST PROFILE EARLY LIFE Painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramicist, Pablo Picasso remains one of the defining figures of modern art. Born in Málaga in 1881, he moved to Barcelona at 13 and first travelled to Paris in 1900, aged 19, to exhibit at the Exposition Universelle. Though deeply connected to Spain, Picasso's artistic identity was increasingly shaped by the French capital, then the world's cultural epicentre. PARIS AND ARTISTIC AWAKENING After his first visit, Picasso returned to Paris and settled in Montmartre, the "Village on the Hill". Surrounded by avant-garde artists and writers, he immersed himself in the area's creative scene. While in Paris, Picasso and the French painter, Georges Braque, pioneered Cubism, overturning traditional ideas of perspective by breaking subjects into shifting planes of light and shade. His 1907 work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon unsettled audiences with its angular forms and rejection of classical beauty. Antibes, he created luminous paintings inspired by his partner, Françoise Gilot. Today, the château is home to the Musée Picasso. EXPERIMENTING WITH CERAMICS After World War II, ceramics became a major focus for Picasso. At the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, he explored form, surface and glaze. It was there in 1953, that he met a new love, Jacqueline Roque. FINAL CHAPTER Picasso spent his final years in Mougins with Jacqueline, living quietly yet creating tirelessly until his death in 1973. His life remains a testament to an artist in perpetual motion: inventive, prolific and endlessly influential, leaving a legacy that continues to shape the world of art today. LATER YEARS IN FRANCE By the late 1920s and 1930s, Picasso was linked to surrealism and often gathered with radical thinkers in Left Bank cafés. During World War II and the liberation that followed, he became closely associated with Paris itself. Yet the city was not his final base. RIVIERA RENEWAL In 1946, Picasso was living on the French Riviera. Reinvigorated by the end of World War II and newfound love, he produced an extraordinary body of work in a matter of months. Working by night in a studio within the guard's hall of Château Grimaldi in

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