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BAIOGRAPHY 036

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This individual's father was an art teacher who, on seeing the quality of his child's early paintings, is said to have handed over his own (1) and never painted again. Born in Málaga, Spain in 1881, by the age of nine they had already produced work that surpassed what most artists achieve in a lifetime of trying.

They moved to Barcelona as a teenager and then to Paris, where they quickly established themselves at the centre of the (2) art world. Their early work passed through several distinct phases, beginning with a period of melancholic blue toned paintings depicting poverty and (3), followed by a warmer rose tinted period featuring circus performers and acrobats.

In 1907 they completed a painting that shocked even the most (4) artists of the time. The work, depicting five figures in a fractured, angular style that bore no relation to conventional (5), became the founding document of a new movement that broke objects into geometric forms and showed multiple perspectives (6). It changed the direction of Western art permanently.

Over a career spanning more than seven decades, they worked in painting, sculpture, ceramics, (7) and stage design, producing an estimated 20,000 works. In 1937, in response to the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War, they created a monumental black and white painting that became one of the most powerful (8) images ever made.

They died in 1973 at the age of 91, still (9). The sheer volume and variety of what they produced across a single (10) remains almost impossible to comprehend.

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