His father, an art instructor, taught him to paint

Picasso’s legacy is often intertwined with his personal relationships

Family revelations and quotes show the legendary artist as both tender and cruel, and his fame and romantic advances sometimes had disastrous effects on those around him.

See some of Picasso's most famous works

Picasso is one of history’s most famous painters. He redefined the standards of artistic beauty and forged a unique, revolutionary modern style. Today, he inspires artists looking to challenge the status quo. The Museu Picasso in Barcelona, the artist’s hometown, holds nearly 5,000 of Picasso’s early works, making it the perfect place to glimpse the ideas and range of his artistic practice. Below is 1917's "Fruit Bowl."

How to paint like Picasso

The cubist style Picasso is most known for explores interesting ideas of form and structure that break from tradition. It turns complex figures into geometric shapes, flattens images, and draws attention to the painting over the subject. Artist Selwyn Leamy breaks down the basics of the cubist technique to show you how to make your own painting in the iconic style.

Picasso was a major influence on Jean-Michel Basquiat

Both Picasso and Basquiat are major figures of 20th-century art, with distinctive styles that flew in the face of the formalized standards of their respective times. Below is one of Basquiat's portraits of Picasso, who influenced the younger artist’s approach to form, from 1984.

Picasso was initially ignored by the US art market

Picasso’s now-iconic style was radical for its time and, as such, was something the US art market initially ignored. Hugh Eakin, author of “Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America,” tells the story of the social norms, tax laws, and influential figures like lawyer John Quinn that set the course for modern art in America in the early 1900s.

Picasso was also a poet

In addition to his painting, Picasso wrote poetry, including several works that were published by his friend André Breton, founder of the surrealist movement, who described reading the poems as “being in the presence of an intimate journal, both of the feelings and of the senses, such as has never been kept before.”

Picasso had several distinct periods

Picasso was known for his ever-evolving style, which art historians have often divided into his artistic periods. Warmer color palettes and subjects characterized his Pink Period (sometimes called the Rose Period). Other phases focused on neoclassical, surrealist, and mythological art and subjects. Below is Family of Saltimbanques from the Pink Period.

In 1949, photography changed Picasso's perspective

Picasso never stopped experimenting, moving through new and familiar styles and materials throughout his life. Despite that, most people only associate Picasso with painting. But in 1949, a chance encounter with Albanian-American photographer Gjon Mili brought yet another medium into Picasso’s world: light.

Picasso’s early masterpiece conceals a long-lost secret

Art historians have studied Picasso's Blue Period throughout the last century, but researchers have now uncovered something previously unknown: an underpainting of a woman under one of the artist's portraits.

How Cassatt's early life influenced her art

The painter came from an affluent background but was determined to become an artist, a decision that was at odds with her father's wishes. Still, she began art school at 15, where she was one of the few female students and not permitted to paint portraits of live models. This brief documentary from The Art Tourist explains how those formative experiences taught Cassatt to challenge conventional approaches in her work.

Basquiat dropped out of high school at 15

Basquiat struggled with his father’s expectations of a white collar life for his son and floundered in school. He dropped out at 15 and left home at 17, living in various places. After finding success, he returned to his father’s home in a limousine and said, “Papa, I made it.”

'Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.'

- Legendary artist Picasso (1881–1973)

Rockwell left high school to become an artist

He began taking art classes at 14, while still in high school, but by 1910, he left traditional schooling to focus on his training at the National Academy of Design. He transferred to the Art Students League soon after to study under Thomas Fogarty, who taught him the particulars of commercial illustration, and George Bridgman, who was known for anatomically precise portraits.

Artist Raphael was one of the three supreme masters of the High Renaissance

Raphael was a prolific and versatile painter who worked as a sponge, adopting the practices of other great painters while making them his own. Thanks to his creating many iterations of the same scene, we can analyze how his mastery evolved over his career.

Jackson Pollock and others developed 'action painting,' highlighting the creative process

A subcategory of performance art, action painting emerged in 1945 as a way to capture a moment-by-moment view of the creative process through painting. For these pieces, the physical act of painting is as important as the finished product. This short explainer video covers the philosophy behind action painting, as well as exploring the works of several well-known action painters, including Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko.

The Canadian artist considered the 'Picasso of the North'

Norval Morrisseau's art is bold, with vivid colors and striking angles. His interviews were similar, with the artist often challenging the way questions were posed and his life was characterized, believing he was being unfairly pigeonholed as an Indigenous artist. This overview of Morisseau's work and life is a helpful primer on the artist, the perfect place to start before jumping into the deep end.

JMW Turner inspired the impressionists

JMW Turner was a prominent member of the Romantic movement, known for his expressive, colorful, and threatening paintings of coastal and marine scenes. Later in his career, he pushed his style to more intense colors and abstract forms, inspiring and preceding the abstract art movements, like Impressionism.

The iPad drawings of a Pop Art legend

David Hockney gained popularity in the 1960s as a major figure in British Pop Art, but since then he's continued innovating, particularly through his use of an unlikely medium: the Apple iPad. This video essay explains why Hockney began drawing on the iPad in the late 2000s and analyzes his major iPad works, including the Yosemite Suite.

Prince was trained in classical ballet during high school

He began taking dance classes with the Minnesota Dance Theatre when he was in high school, something dance critic Caroline Palmer noted could be seen in his stage performances. "For so many dancers, they may start in one dance form and morph into whatever their art requires," she said. "You see that in Prince—ballet in the core, and then he added."

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother

Dalí's parents found the miracle of his birth nine months after his brother died to be profound, telling him he was his brother's reincarnation. Dalí carried this belief into his adult life and often cited its deep influence on him, including his preoccupation with death and mortality.

Socrates is considered by many the father of Western philosophy

We know Socrates mostly through the writings of Plato, one of his admirers. Plato's dialogues typically feature Socrates as the main speaker. His penetrating look at life's most important subjects—from the nature of justice and knowledge to the existence of gods—made him many enemies, and even led to his execution.

Camus credited a teacher with his success

After winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957, Camus wrote a letter to Louis Germain, his former teacher, thanking the man for "the affectionate hand" he extended to Camus as a student. In the short note, he'd go on to write, "without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened."

Jean-Jacques Lequeu was an amateur architect who dabbled with the surreal

Although he never found a career in architecture, Lequeu sketched hundreds of images in his free time. His innovative style wasn't discovered until after his death, but the dreamlike drawings have since been appreciated for their visionary quality.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Why patterns in art are so pleasing

Repeated visual cues like shapes or lines derive from the brain's innate compulsion to identify faces, places, bodies, and more. With repeated shapes, the brain seeks out resolution to the subtle variations between them. See examples in art and music.

Jeff Bezos’ grandfather made his own needles by hand for the cattle on his ranch

Jeff Bezos’ mother gave birth to him at 17 years old, and his grandfather was very involved in his life. Bezos spent much of his childhood helping out on his grandfather’s ranch, for instance. In this short clip, Bezos shares some of his thoughts on his family members and his early years of life.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

In recent years a child anxiety expert has created and tested a novel phobia and anxiety treatment approach for children, focused on changing how parents respond to the fears.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.