Early Youth

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in the Spanish coastal town of Málaga, where his father, José Ruiz Blasco, was an art instructor at a provincial school. Picasso began to draw under his
father’s tutelage and studied in various art schools between 1892 and 1897. Picasso worked with live models as well as plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture. Eventually, the young artist displayed a precocious command of academic draftsmanship that would be evident throughout his career, later serving as the vehicle for some of his most original work. In Madrid Picasso’s art was also shaped by visits to the Prado, where he studied works by Spanish old masters
Velázquez and Ribera. During this period Picasso produced several large-scale pictures on religious and allegorical themes, which appeared in official exhibitions locally. At the same time, he displayed
an irreverent playfulness in works such as the Self Portrait in a Wig (no. 12), in which the artist masquerades as an eighteenth-century Spanish noble.