Something about Picasso’s childhood…
RosaHi all! 
As you already know (most of you anyway if you had me as your teacher) I am not from Barcelona but from Málaga in the south of Spain; what you maybe do not know, it’s that Picasso comes from Málaga too!!!
Pablo Ruíz Picasso was born on the 25th of October of 1881 in Malaga as the son of an art and drawing teacher, José Ruíz y María Picasso, from whom he took his artistic name. Pablo lived all his childhood in the central “Plaza de la Merced” in Málaga, a famous square in the city, not only for being the market-place since the medieval times, but also for being a square where parents, nannies and children used to gather especially in the spring/summer-time to play and feed the pigeons, as it is full of them.
Pablo’s family lived in a nice building in the left corner of the square, I think on the second floor, in a nice flat of around 100m2. A big flat considering how families in those times lived all together in one room. My mother’s aunt worked there as “portera” (porter) and she used to tell my mum stories about Pablo and her sisters, Concepción y Lola, when she was a child. Stories like how Picasso’s father had pigeons kept in a big cage on the terrace of the building and loved painting them or how later Pablo, imitating his father, started painting the pigeons flocking in the square that he could see from his terrace.
His father introduced him to art and asked him sometimes to finish his paintings for him. Soon he realized how good his young son was, even at the age of 9, and it is said that when he observed how much movement and energy he could transmit in his pigeons, gave him his brushes and palette and promised never to paint again in his life.
In 1891, the family, now including Picasso’s two younger sisters, moved to La Coruña. Picasso’s father got another job as a drawing teacher. Picasso enrolled in his father’s class. When he was 14, he painted oil portraits of family friends.
In 1895, Picasso’s father switched jobs again, taking a position at La Lonja, the art school in Barcelona. This was very fortunate; Barcelona was a big city and not a bit provincial. There, the thriving artistic community kept up-to-date with everything that was going on in the artistic world… from this moment the Picasso we all Know now was born!
Pablo never returned to Málaga and never again saw the pigeons in his beloved square. After the civil war, the fascists won the war and Pablo never wanted to come back.
Málaga now has a beautiful museum with many of his early paintings, although the most famous museum of Picasso is here in Barcelona.
I am not sure if I like all his paintings or not, but I am very proud that he is Spanish and comes from Málaga! 
Rosa
December 10th, 2007 at 11:15 am
I went to the Picasso musuem a while ago. It is interessting I admit, but it was also very full. If you have the chance then do the museum tour out of season, you will get more out of it.