Spanish Painters: Pablo Picasso & Frida Kahlo

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Picasso is considered by many to be the greatest painter of the 20th century. He is best known as the inventor of a revolutionary art style, Cubism, and for his work as a painter, sculptor, and designer. He was born in Málaga, Spain, and spent most of his life in Paris. It was there that he met writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, who helped support him by purchasing many of his early works. One of the more remarkable qualities of Picasso’s career was the rapidity and ease with which he evolved from one artistic style to the next. His work between 1900 and 1906 was representative of the Impressionist style founded by masters such as Matisse, Monet, and Seurat. At that time he also experimented with a style borrowed from the Art Nouveau movement. The years between 1901 and 1904 are considered as his Blue Period. His work between 1904 and 1906 is known as his Pink Period. In 1907, we see the beginning of Cubism. During the Spanish Civil War, he painted his most historically significant work, Guernica (1937), as a protest of the bombing of the Basque town of the same name.




Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Frida Kahlo is perhaps the most recognizable female painter in the world. She was born in 1907 in Mexico City. Frida began painting while convalescing from a serious road accident at the age of 15. As a young girl, she sent her work to the painter Diego Rivera, whom she later married (1928). Characterized by vibrant imagery, many of her pictures were striking self-portraits. Pain, which followed her all her life, and the suffering of women are recurring and indelible themes in her surrealistic and often shocking pictures. Andrè Breton likened her paintings to ‘a ribbon around a bomb’.

Spanish Artist

Tito Puente (1923-2000)
Tito Puente was one of the most prolific musicians in the world. When he died at the age of 77, he had recorded over 100 albums. Most of the rock generation is familiar with Tito Puente through Santana’s cover of Oye Como Va. This Juilliard-trained musician is credited with fusing Cuban rhythms with big-band swing and bop. The son of Puerto Rican immigrants, Puente grew up in the Spanish Harlem section of Manhattan. By age 13, his family, friends, and band mates regarded him as a musical prodigy. With his innovative and highly danceable blend of Latin rhythms and big band jazz, Puente found success quickly. Puente also benefited from much collaboration with other musicians, including jazz greats like Buddy Morrow and Woody Herman and vocalists such as Celia Cruz. In 1963, he recorded the hit song Oye Como Va, which became a modern classic and a huge crossover hit for Santana. He won five Grammy Awards over the course of his career.




Carlos Gardel (1890-1935)
Gardel’s skyrocketing career was cut short in 1935, when he lost his life in a plane crash while on tour. A wave of grief and mourning spread through the Spanish-speaking world: a woman in Havana committed suicide, thousands of people made a pilgrimage to see his body in Buenos Aires, some of them traveling from Columbia, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. Known as el zorzal criollo, the song bird of Buenos Aires, Carlos Gardel is a legendary figure in Argentina. His career coincided with the development of that intrinsically Argentine cultural icon, the tango. Gardel made the music his own by inventing the tango-song. Radio performances and a film career extended this appeal. Instantly immortal and preserved forever young, his enduring fame is measured by the popular expression, “Gardel sings better every day.”