The Young Picasso

So I finished that big biography of Picasso last night, it ends right before he painted the above at 26. Although I did feel the book was a bit tedious in all the details of minor figures who came and went in the space of a paragraph, I also felt awe at the speed with which Picasso worked through an idea, conquered it and moved on. Blink and you miss the Rose Period or the Blue Period. You can see other artists near Picasso being left behind still puttering around with something he left years ago. It seems he always had that single minded purpose to create art, everything else in his life is incidental.
It was fun to hear of some of the art you have to peer at in a crowd being so accessible in the early 1900's. A friend of Picasso, no one special or rich, had a Gauguin hanging in his living room that Picasso used to go visit frequently. A lot of Picasso's early work is lost since he had to paint it over because he couldn't afford new canvases. The level of his poverty was a surprise fror me but even in those days grown up sons apparently moved back in with their parents and brought their dirty laundry home. Some things never change.
I plan on reading the next 2 volumes.