Biography: Pablo Picasso - A Primitive Soul on AllMovie

Part of the Biography television series from A&E, this documentary reviews the career and personal life of artist Pablo Picasso. He studied art in Barcelona and Madrid, and in 1901 set up a studio in Montmartre, Paris. His "blue period", a series of striking studies of the poor in haunting attitudes of despair and gloom, gave way to the life-affirming "pink period", full of harlequins, acrobats, and the incidents of circus life. He then turned to brown, and began to work in sculpture. He became the architect of a style known as analytical Cubism, a movement which he developed with Braque. Inn 1917, he began an association with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, designing costumes and sets. His major creation is "Guernica", expressing in synthetic Cubism his horror of the bombing of this Basque town during the Civil War. During World War II, Picasso resided in Paris, and after the liberation joined the communist party. A great innovator, he also illustrated classical texts, and experimented in sculpture, ceramics, and lithography.