It's likely that most people will have heard of the name 'Picasso', even if they do not consider themselves an art lover. That's because Pablo Picasso was a prolific creator of art who completed more than 1800 paintings, more than 1200 sculptures, more than 2500 ceramic works, more than 10000 drawings and many tapestries during his career. He was a painter, sculptor, print-maker and poet who is widely hailed as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.

Here at New Lanark, we are delighted to be opening our new Exhibition Gallery with a stunning exhibition, ARTIST TEXTILES Picasso to Warhol from 26 January – 29 April 2018. The exhibition traces 20th century art in textiles and vintage fashions with highlights including prints of work by Picasso, Warhol, Dali and Matisse. ARTIST TEXTILES was curated by the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, and has previously toured internationally to the Netherlands, USA and Canada.

This will be the first time the collection of over 200 rare and vintage pieces have been shown in Scotland!

To celebrate the exhibition we are going to be sharing a series of 'Artist in Focus' blog posts, to let you know more about these fascinating artists whose work will be shown at New Lanark…

Artist in Focus: Pablo Picasso

1. Picasso's Full Name Has 23 Words

Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. He was named after various saints and relatives. The "Picasso" is actually from his mother, Maria Picasso y Lopez. His father is named Jose Ruiz Blasco.


2. Picasso's first word

Picasso's mother claimed that his first word was "piz," short of lápiz the Spanish word for 'pencil.' It's like he was born to be an artist! At the age of 7, Picasso's father Ruiz, who was also a painter and art professor, began to give him a formal education in art, focussing on drawing techniques and oil painting.

3. Picasso's first paintings

Two years later, at the tender young age of 9, Picasso completed his first painting: Le picador, a man riding a horse in a bullfight. At the age of thirteen, Picasso studied at the School of fine Arts in Barcelona – at this point his father vowed to give up painting as he felt his son had surpassed him!

At the age of 15 Picasso completed his first major painting, an "academic" work named 'First Communion', featuring a portrait of his father, mother, and younger sister kneeling before an altar. At the age of 16, Picasso entered the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid.

4. Picasso at school

Despite his clear artistic abilities, Picasso was not a committed student and he frequently missed classes. He particularly didn't like being told what to do, and was often sent to 'detention', which might not have been much of a punishment after all:

For being a bad student I was banished to the 'calaboose' – a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly … I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping "

– Pablo Picasso

5. Cubism: Full of Little Cubes

In 1909, Picasso and French artist Georges Braque (whose work is also shown in ARTIST TEXTILES) co-founded an art movement known as cubism. Actually, it was a French art critic Louis Vauxcelles who first called it "bizarre cubiques" or cubism, after noting that Picasso and Braque's paintings are "full of little cubes."

6. "Minotaurs and Matadors"

In the 1930s Picasso became fascinated with the mythical creature the Minotaur, a creature with the body of a man and head of a bull. It appeared in many of his pieces of art such as La Minotauromachie VII (1935). Apparently Picasso identified himself with this creature, its human and animal principle, locked in a maze, hidden from sunlight. In 2017,"Minotaurs and Matadors" – an exhibition curated by Sir John Richardson in partnership with Gagosian and Picasso's grandson, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, opened in London. The exhibition examined the intersection of Picasso's bullfighting imagery with his mythological and biographical compositions of the 1930s.

If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a Minotaur.

—Pablo Picasso