Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) is a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spends most of his adult life in France.

Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helps develop and explore.

Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrates extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, his style changes as he experiments with different theories, techniques, and ideas.

After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivates Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently are often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

Picasso's work is often categorized into periods.

While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.

Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism.

His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieves universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and becomes one of the best-known figures in  twentieth-century art.