Pablo Picasso

Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso trained under his father from age seven and painted with naturalistic precision through adolescence. After 1906, spurred by a rivalry with Henri Matisse, he began the stylistic upheavals that defined him: the Blue Period's sorrow, the Rose Period's warmth, then the African-influenced work that led to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. With Georges Braque he invented Cubism, splitting it into Analytic and Synthetic phases through 1919. He moved through neoclassicism in the early twenties, flirted with Surrealism by mid-decade, and later fused elements from across his past. In 1937 he painted Guernica, a wrenching response to the German and Italian bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War. Over 76 years and countless works, he became the most famous artist of his century - and among the wealthiest.