April 8: On This Day in World History … briefly
Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, his wife Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.
1973: Picasso draws his last breath
Spanish painter Pablo Picasso died at the age of 91 at his chateau in Mougins after suffering a heart attack.
His genius began to bloom after he moved from his native Barcelona to Paris in 1904. Stimulated by the unique intellectual and artistic climate of the French capital, he threw off his ‘blue period’ of limited colour variation and gloomy subject matter to concentrate on a lighter style, known as his ‘rose period’.
Picasso’s early spirit of artistic adventure led him to originate the abstract style that became synonymous with his name – Cubism.
His legacy consists of 140 000 paintings and drawings, 100 000 engravings, 300 sculptures and thousands of other documents, such as the menu cards he illustrated to pay for his dinners in the early days in Paris.
Nevertheless, he still found the time to enjoy the good life, beautiful women and bullfighting.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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