The Dream
Pablo Picasso
Ordinary People :: Pablo Picasso :: Painter, Sculptor, Printmaker, Ceramicist, Stage Designer, Poet and Playwright
Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France.
As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th 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 helped develop and explore.
Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas.
His work is often categorised 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).
Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.
Early Life
Picasso was baptised Pablo, Diego, José, Francisco de Paula, Juan Nepomuceno, Maria de los Remedios, Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López. Despite being baptised Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist. Picasso's family was middle-class. His father was a painter who specialised in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz's ancestors were minor aristocrats.
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil". From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
Bather With Beach Ball
Pablo Picasso
The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son's technique, an apocryphal story relates, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting, though paintings by him exist from later years.
In 1895, Picasso was traumatised when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a small room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picasso's father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid's Royal Academy of San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrolment. Madrid held many other attractions. The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colours, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso's later work.
Career beginnings
Before 1900
Picasso's training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist's beginnings. During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun. The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called "without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting."
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non-naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899–1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favourite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.
Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm.
During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathising with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work Picasso; before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.
Blue Period
Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colours, began either in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Infrared imagery of Picasso's 1901 painting The Blue Room reveals another painting beneath the surface.
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in The Blindman's Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Bloch.
Girl Before a Mirror
Pablo Picasso
Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904–1906) is characterised by a more cheery style with orange and pink colours, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a bohemian artist who became his mistress, in Paris in 1904. Olivier appears in many of his Rose Period paintings, many of which are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899–1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.
By 1905, Picasso became a favourite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy. Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse, while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso.
In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian and art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubism that they jointly developed. Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time.
Modern art transformed
African-influenced Period
Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artefacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Cubism
Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollinaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.
Nude Woman in a Red Armchair
Pablo Picasso
Fame
After acquiring some fame and fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, who he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915.
At the outbreak of World War I (August 1914) Picasso lived in Avignon. Braque and Derain were mobilized and Apollinaire joined the French artillery, while the Spaniard Juan Gris remained from the Cubist circle. During the war Picasso was able to continue painting uninterrupted, unlike his French comrades.
His paintings became more sombre and his life changed with dramatic consequences. Kahnweiler’s contract had terminated on his exile from France. At this point Picasso’s work would be taken on by the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg. After the loss of Eva Gouel, Picasso had an affair with Gaby Lespinasse. During the spring of 1916 Apollinaire returned from the front wounded. They renewed their friendship, but Picasso began to frequent new social circles.
Towards the end of World War I, Picasso made a number of important relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris, and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Erik Satie's Parade, in Rome; they spent their honeymoon near Biarritz in the villa of glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz.
After return from honeymoon, and in desperate need of money, Picasso started his exclusive relationship with the French-Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. As part of his first duties, Rosenberg agreed to rent the couple an apartment in Paris at his own expense, which was located next to his own house. This was the start of a deep brother-like friendship between two very different men, that would last until the outbreak of World War II.
Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant to the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlova's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev's troupe, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several drawings of the composer.
In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova's death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya.
Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso's death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained several mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women:
Paulo (4 February 1921 – 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) – with Olga Khokhlova
Maya (5 September 1935 – ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) – with Marie-Thérèse Walter
Claude (15 May 1947 –) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) – with Françoise Gilot
Paloma (19 April 1949 – ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) – with Françoise Gilot
Photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.
Jeune Fille Endormie
Pablo Picasso
Classicism and Surrealism
In February 1917, Picasso made his first trip to Italy. In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This "return to order" is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, Jean Metzinger, the artists of the New Objectivity movement and of the Novecento Italiano movement. Picasso's paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Raphael and Ingres.
In 1925 the Surrealist writer and poet André Breton declared Picasso as 'one of ours' in his article Le Surréalisme et la peinture, published in Révolution surréaliste. Les Demoiselles was reproduced for the first time in Europe in the same issue. Yet Picasso exhibited Cubist works at the first Surrealist group exhibition in 1925; the concept of 'psychic automatism in its pure state' defined in the Manifeste du surréalisme never appealed to him entirely. He did at the time develop new imagery and formal syntax for expressing himself emotionally, "releasing the violence, the psychic fears and the eroticism that had been largely contained or sublimated since 1909", writes art historian Melissa McQuillan. Although this transition in Picasso's work was informed by Cubism for its spatial relations, "the fusion of ritual and abandon in the imagery recalls the primitivism of the Demoiselles and the elusive psychological resonances of his Symbolist work", writes McQuillan. Surrealism revived Picasso’s attraction to primitivism and eroticism.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picasso's Guernica. The minotaur and Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter are heavily featured in his celebrated Vollard Suite of etchings.
In 1939–40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major retrospective of Picasso's principal works until that time. This exhibition lionised the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.
Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War – Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, "It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them."
Guernica was on display in New York's Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981, it was returned to Spain and was on exhibit at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting was put on display in Madrid's Reina Sofía Museum when it opened.
Guernica
Pablo Picasso
World War II and beyond
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picasso's artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time. He was often harassed by the Gestapo. During one search of his apartment, an officer saw a photograph of the painting Guernica. "Did you do that?" the German asked Picasso. "No," he replied, "You did".
Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint, producing works such as the Still Life with Guitar (1942) and The Charnel House (1944–48). Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French Resistance.
Around this time, Picasso took up writing as an alternative outlet. Between 1935 and 1959 he wrote over 300 poems. Largely untitled except for a date and sometimes the location of where it was written (for example "Paris 16 May 1936"), these works were gustatory, erotic and at times scatological, as were his two full-length plays Desire Caught by the Tail (1941) and The Four Little Girls (1949).
In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso, then 63 years old, began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Françoise Gilot. She was 40 years younger than he was. Picasso grew tired of his mistress Dora Maar; Picasso and Gilot began to live together. Eventually they had two children: Claude, born in 1947 and Paloma, born in 1949. In her 1964 book Life with Picasso, Gilot describes his abusive treatment and myriad infidelities which led her to leave him, taking the children with her. This was a severe blow to Picasso.
Picasso had affairs with women of an even greater age disparity than his and Gilot's. While still involved with Gilot, in 1951 Picasso had a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who was four years younger than Gilot. By his 70s, many paintings, ink drawings and prints have as their theme an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model. Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. She became his lover, and then his second wife in 1961. The two were together for the remainder of Picasso's life.
His marriage to Roque was also a means of revenge against Gilot; with Picasso's encouragement, Gilot had divorced her then husband, Luc Simon, with the plan to marry Picasso to secure the rights of her children as Picasso's legitimate heirs. Picasso had already secretly married Roque, after Gilot had filed for divorce. This strained his relationship with Claude and Paloma.
By this time, Picasso had constructed a huge Gothic home, and could afford large villas in the south of France, such as Mas Notre-Dame-de-Vie on the outskirts of Mougins, and in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. He was an international celebrity, with often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Picasso made a few film appearances, always as himself, including a cameo in Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
La Lecture
Pablo Picasso
Later works
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in mid-1949. In the 1950s, Picasso's style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velázquez's painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge 50-foot (15 m)-high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognisable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colourful and expressive, and from 1968 to 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Death
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.
The Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso
Political views
Aside from the several anti-war paintings that he created, Picasso remained personally neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to join the armed forces for any side or country. He had also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Picasso was already in his late fifties. He was even older at the onset of World War II, and could not be expected to take up arms in those conflicts. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to their country to join either side.
While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them. The Spanish Civil War provided the impetus for Picasso's first overtly political work, The Dream and Lie of Franco which was produced "specifically for propagandistic and fundraising purposes." This surreal fusion of words and images was intended to be sold as a series of postcards to raise funds for the Spanish Republican cause.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Soviet politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: "I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics." His Communist militancy, common among continental intellectuals and artists at the time (although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain), has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalí (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship):
Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.)
In the late 1940s his old friend the surrealist poet and Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist André Breton was more blunt; refusing to shake hands with Picasso, he told him: "I don't approve of your joining the Communist Party nor with the stand you have taken concerning the purges of the intellectuals after the Liberation".
In 1962, he received the Lenin Peace Prize. Biographer and art critic John Berger felt his talents as an artist were "wasted" by the communists.
According to Jean Cocteau's diaries, Picasso once said to him in reference to the communists: "I have joined a family, and like all families, it's full of shit".
He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea.
Nude Green Leaves and Bust
Pablo Picasso
Style and technique
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs.
The medium in which Picasso made his most important contribution was painting. In his paintings, Picasso used color as an expressive element, but relied on drawing rather than subtleties of color to create form and space. He sometimes added sand to his paint to vary its texture. A nanoprobe of Picasso's The Red Armchair (1931) by physicists at Argonne National Laboratory in 2012 confirmed art historians' belief that Picasso used common house paint in many of his paintings. Much of his painting was done at night by artificial light.
Picasso's early sculptures were carved from wood or modeled in wax or clay, but from 1909 to 1928 Picasso abandoned modeling and instead made sculptural constructions using diverse materials. An example is Guitar (1912), a relief construction made of sheet metal and wire that Jane Fluegel terms a "three-dimensional planar counterpart of Cubist painting" that marks a "revolutionary departure from the traditional approaches, modeling and carving".
From the beginning of his career, Picasso displayed an interest in subject matter of every kind, and demonstrated a great stylistic versatility that enabled him to work in several styles at once. For example, his paintings of 1917 included the pointillist Woman with a Mantilla, the Cubist Figure in an Armchair, and the naturalistic Harlequin (all in the Museu Picasso, Barcelona). In 1919, he made a number of drawings from postcards and photographs that reflect his interest in the stylistic conventions and static character of posed photographs.
In 1921 he simultaneously painted several large neoclassical paintings and two versions of the Cubist composition Three Musicians (Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art). In an interview published in 1923, Picasso said, "The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting ... If the subjects I have wanted to express have suggested different ways of expression I have never hesitated to adopt them."
Although his Cubist works approach abstraction, Picasso never relinquished the objects of the real world as subject matter. Prominent in his Cubist paintings are forms easily recognized as guitars, violins, and bottles. When Picasso depicted complex narrative scenes it was usually in prints, drawings, and small-scale works; Guernica (1937) is one of his few large narrative paintings.
Picasso painted mostly from imagination or memory. According to William Rubin, Picasso "could only make great art from subjects that truly involved him ... Unlike Matisse, Picasso had eschewed models virtually all his mature life, preferring to paint individuals whose lives had both impinged on, and had real significance for, his own."
The art critic Arthur Danto said Picasso's work constitutes a "vast pictorial autobiography" that provides some basis for the popular conception that "Picasso invented a new style each time he fell in love with a new woman". The autobiographical nature of Picasso's art is reinforced by his habit of dating his works, often to the day. He explained: "I want to leave to posterity a documentation that will be as complete as possible. That's why I put a date on everything I do."
Two Women Running on a Beach
Pablo Picasso
Artistic legacy
At the time of Picasso's death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of his early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal his firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, his close friend and personal secretary.
Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for US$104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for US$95.2 million at Sotheby's on 3 May 2006. On 4 May 2010, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was sold at Christie's for $106.5 million. The 1932 work, which depicts Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter reclining and as a bust, was in the personal collection of Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody, who died in November 2009. The previous auction record ($104.3 million) was set in February 2010, by Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I.
As of 2004, Picasso remained the top-ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report. More of his paintings have been stolen than any other artist's; the Art Loss Register has 550 of his works listed as missing.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The US copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society.
In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso, Picasso is portrayed by actor Anthony Hopkins. Picasso is also a character in Steve Martin's 1993 play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile.
Pablo Picasso 1908
Photographer Unknown
Quotes From Picasso
1920s
"Picasso Speaks," 1923
"Picasso Speaks." in The Arts, New York, May 1923. pp. 315-26; Reprinted in Alfred Barr: Picasso, New York 1946, pp. 270-1.
I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research in connection with modern painting. In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man (woman) who, with his (her) eyes fixed on the ground, spends his (her) life looking for the purse that fortune should put in his (her) path. The one who finds something no matter what it might be, even if his (her) intention were not to search for it, at least arouses our curiosity, if not our admiration.
p. 315
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his (her) lies. If he (she) only shows in his (her) work that he (she) has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he (she) would never accomplish anything.
p. 315.
Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?
p. 319.
Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his (her) mode of expression this only means that he (she) has changed his (her) manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse.
p. 391.
Many think that cubism is an art of transition, an experiment which is to bring ulterior results. Those who think that way have not understood it. Cubism is not either a seed or a foetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life. A mineral substance, having geometric formation, is not made so for transitory purposes, it is to remain what it is and will always have its own form.
p. 323.
1930s
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
Attributed to Picasso in: Jean Cocteau (1932) Opium: The Diary of an Addict. p. 63
I do not search, I find.
I do not seek, I find.
Quoted in Graham Sutherland, "A Trend in English Draughtsmanship", Signature, III (1936), pp. 7-13.
It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he (she) wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.
Picasso (1937), quote in: William Rowlandson (2007) Reading Lezama's Paradiso. p. 115.
Reply by Picasso when he was asked to explain the symbolism in the Guernica.
..this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.
Quoted in: Paul Jones (2011) The Sociology of Architecture: Constructing Identities. p. 47.
Other explanation by Picasso of the Guernica.
"Conversation avec Picasso," 1935
Interview with Christian Zervos in: "Conversation avec Picasso," in Cahiers d'Art, Vol X, 7-10, (1935), p. 173-178. Translated in: Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art. 1946, and republished in: Herschel Browning Chip (1968) Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. (1968), p. 266-273 ; Also quoted in: Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963. (translation Daphne Woodward).
It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit!
Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 267).
In the old days pictures went forward toward completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture — then I destroy it. In the end though, nothing is lost: the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else
Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 267)
Other translation:
Formerly pictures used to move towards completion in progressive stages. Each day would bring something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else.
Richard Friedenthal (1968, p. 256); Also quoted in: John Bowker (1988) Is anybody out there?: religions and belief in God in the contemporary world. p. 57.
Abstract art is only painting. What about drama?
There is no abstract art. You always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 270).
Other translation:
Abstract art is only painting. And what’s so dramatic about that? There is no abstract art. One must always begin with something. Afterwards one can remove all semblance of reality.
Richard Friedenthal (1968, p. 256-7).
I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.
Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 271).
Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived... The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.
Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 271), quoted in Chipp (1978, 266); As cited in: Constance Milbrath (1998) Patterns of Artistic Development in Children, p. 257.
1940s
Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.
La peinture n’est pas faite pour décorer des appartements. C’est un instrument de guerre offensive et défensive contre l’ennemi.
La pintura no se ha inventado para adornar las habitaciones. La pintura es un arma ofensiva, en la defensa contra el enemigo.
Les lettres françaises (1943-03-24).
1950s
Les gloires, les trompettes, les palmes... et les bas-reliefs,... tout cela fait un monument
Translation: The glories, trumpets, palms... and low reliefs,... all that makes a monument.
Picasso (1952). Quoted in: Michael D. Garval (2004) "A Dream of Stone": Fame, Vision, and Monumentality in Nineteenth-century French Literary Culture. p. 226.
Picasso commented on the matter of the monument destruction in Paris.
When I don't have red, I use blue.
Pablo Picasso (1953); Quoted in: Kilkenny (2004) Doomsday Marauders, p. 83.
Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man (woman).
In: Vogue, 1 November 1956.
There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into a sun.
In: Sergei Eisenstein (1957) Film form [and]: The film sense, p. 127.
It takes a very long time to become young.
Cocteau, Jean. "The Hand of a Stranger (Journal D'un Inconnu)."
1960s
The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is a spider ’s web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.
Quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 258 (translation Daphne Woodward)
Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.
In: Antonina Vallentin (1963) Picasso, p. 168.
[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.
As discussed in this entry from Quote Investigator, the origin seems to be the article "Pablo Picasso: A Composite Interview" by William Fifield which appeard in The Paris Review 32, Summer-Fall 1964, and collected a number of interviews Fifield had done with Picasso.
Common later variant: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." This variant seems to have arisen in the 1980s, the earliest known appearance in a book is Herman Feshbach,
"Reflections on the Microprocessor Revolution: A Physicist's Viewpoint", in Man and Technology (1983), ed. Bruce M. Adkins, where the attribution is described as "rumoured".
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Quoted in: LIFE, Vol. 57, nr. 11 (11 September 1964). p. 9.
It's like God's. God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.
Picasso quoted in 'TIME'; Quoted in: The Atlantic, Vol. 214 (1964), p. 97.
Picasso commented on his ambiguous style, or use of multiple styles.
When there's anything to steal, I steal
Quoted in: Thought. Vol. 17 (1965). p. 154.
The magazine further commented:
Picasso's remark — "When there's anything to steal, I steal" — was fair warning to the competition. In modern art he has been, for years, the cock-of- the-walk, (The broody hens, one supposes, are also part of that picture.) But the book is valuable, primarily, for Picasso's observations about his own work and the work of others.
It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care.
On the first moon landing, quoted in The New York Times, (1969-07-21).
For me, there are two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.
Quoted in: Briton Hadden, Henry Robinson Luce (1969) Time, Vol. 93. p. 66.
1970s
Picasso and Lucien Clergue at Condor Films, 1973
It was thinking about Casagemas’s death that started me painting in blue.
Original: C’est en passant que Casagemas était mort que je me suis mis à piendre en bleu
Quoted in Pierre Daix, La Vie de Peintre de Pablo Picasso, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977.
Picasso explained his friend Pierre Daix (around 1965), why he started painting in blue early around 1905. Picasso had made a portrait of Carles Casagemas in 1899.
To contradict. To show one eye full face and one in profile. Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them! My painting is a series of non-sequiturs. ...
Quoted in: Pierre Cabanne (1977) Pablo Picasso: His Life and Times, p. 268.
Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.
Quoted in: The Artist, Vol. 93 (1978) p. 5.
Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more.
Quoted in: Scott Slater, Alec Solomita (1980) Exits: stories of dying moments & parting words. p. 8.
Slater & Solomita (1980) explained:
"It was a spirited dinner and Picasso a cheerful, genial host. After the meal, while pouring wine into a friend's glass, Picasso said, Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more. A little later, about 11:30 P.M., he left his guests, saying, And now I must go back to work. He was up painting until 3:00 A.M. That morning Picasso woke at 11:30, unable to move. By 11:40 he was dead..".
Attributed from posthumous publications
1980s
For a long time I limited myself to one colour — as a form of discipline.
On his "blue" and "rose" periods, quoted in Picasso on Art (1988), ed. Dore Ashton.
I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. After all, what is a painter? He (she) is a collector who gets what he (she) likes in others by painting them himself (herself). This is how I begin and then it becomes something else.
Quoted in: Ann Livermore (1988) Artists and Aesthetics in Spain. p. 154
Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.
People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.
Quoted in Picasso on Art (1988), ed. Dore Ashton.
Their forms had no more influence on me than they did on Matisse. Or Derain. But for them, the masks were sculptures like all others. When Matisse showed me his first African head, he spoke to me of Egyptian art.
Andre Malraux cites Picasso in: Anatoliĭ Podoksik, Marina Aleksandrovna Bessonova, Pablo Picasso (1989) Picasso: The Artists Work in Soviet Museums. p. 13.
Picasso talking about his discovery of African art.
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Quoted in: InfoWorld, Vol. 11, Nr. 1-9 (1989).
1990s
La inspiración existe, pero tiene que encontrarte trabajando.
Translation: Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
In: Tomás R. Villasante (1994) Las ciudades hablan: identidades y movimientos sociales en seis metrópolis latinoamericanas. p. 264.
People want to find a "meaning" in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.
Quoted in: Ingo F. Walther (1996) Picasso, p. 67.
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
Quoted in: Peter Erskine, Rick Mattingly (1998) Drum Perspective, p. 73.
2000s
Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.
Quoted in Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio (2002), p. 159
Misattributed
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Attributed in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 132, and many places on the internet, this was actually stated by Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to Anthon van Rappard (August,18 1885), also rendered "I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it."
Quotes about Picasso
A friend built a modern house and he suggested that Picasso too should have one built. But, said Picasso, of course not, I want an old house. Imagine, he said, if Michelangelo would have been pleased if someone had given him a fine piece of Renaissance furniture, not at all.
Gertrude Stein, Picasso (1938) [Dover, 1984, ISBN 0-486-24715-5], p. 31.
Note: Stein used the spelling "Michael Angelo" rather than "Michelangelo." The quotation preserves this spelling.
Picasso's great fresco is a monument to destruction, a cry of outrage and horror amplifed by the spirit of genius.
Herbert Read, "Guernica", in A Coat of Many Colours, Routledge, 1945.
Picasso es pintor, yo también; Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.
Salvador Dalí (attributed).
Wikipedia
1944 Paris. Liberation. Lee Miller and Pablo Picasso in his Studio
The Times
How photographer Lee Miller inspired Pablo Picasso
Nancy Durrant
He was a revolutionary artist, she was a free-spirited photographer. A new exhibition shows how the sparks flew.
There was something inevitable about the friendship of Pablo Picasso and Lee Miller. The 20th century’s most famous artist and one of its most influential photographers were key figures of their time, not just in the ways that they reflected it in their work — both made an impact with their response to war, Picasso with Guernica, and Miller with her front-line reporting for Vogue — but in how they reflected it as people.
Their common traits — huge charisma, great talent and a disregard for the petty mores of society — made them kindred spirits.
Now an exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh of more than 100 photographs, as well as paintings and material such as letters and telegrams from the Lee Miller archives, aims to shed light on this deeply felt and pivotal relationship.
Their early lives had similarities: Picasso was born in 1881 into a middle-class family in Málaga in Andalucia — his father was an art professor, and early on taught his son to draw. Miller was born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. Miller’s father Theodore was a mechanical engineer by training and a keen photographer, who not only used his tomboy daughter as a model but also bought her her own Brownie camera and encouraged her to use it and take an interest in its workings.
Growing up, both were obsessed with the cinema. The young Picasso, tooling around turn-of-the-century Paris with Georges Braque when the medium was new, adored Charlie Chaplin and cowboy movies. As cubists, he and Braque saw potential in the overlaying and editing of film to interrupt time, something they tried to do in their painting. For Miller, discovering the movies at the age of ten at the opera house in Poughkeepsie was a formative experience, exposing her not just to the arts of design and lighting but also to the convention-defying behaviour of on-screen flappers such as Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. And in Paris, both Miller and Picasso found an environment in which they could thrive as artists. By July 1937, they had both done their time there — Picasso in the studios he shared with the likes of Braque, Gertrude Stein and Max Jacob, and Miller with her lover and mentor Man Ray. The scene was set for these two huge personalities to come together.
It was in Mougins, where Picasso was on holiday in the south of France, that it finally happened. Miller had travelled there with her new lover, the surrealist painter Roland Penrose, whom she had met that summer at a fancy dress party. The effect on Penrose, says their son Antony, was shattering: “He was absolutely blown away. He said it was like being struck by lightning and he was literally never the same again.” Now they had joined Man Ray, his lover Ady Fidelin, Max Ernst and others on a trip starting in Cornwall that ended in a “proto-hippy love-in” at Picasso’s villa, according to the art historian Mark Haworth-Booth in his book The Art of Lee Miller.
The effect of Miller’s arrival on Picasso seems to have been exhilarating.
“Straight away Picasso was fascinated by Lee’s looks, on one level,” Antony says, “but on a much more important level he was fascinated by her intellect. Lee had this amazingly eclectic knowledge and she was also very witty. She had the New York wisecrack and that was great currency. She also had this tremendously uninhibited way of behaving and that made him realise, here was an incredible, emancipated woman of the 20th century.”
Picasso’s affairs are well documented — over the years of his friendship with Miller, he had several important relationships, with Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Roque (all of whom Miller got on well with), but his liaisons were rarely limited to them. His long-term companions, though, all had one thing in common: “The women that he associated with, with one or two notable exceptions, were all highly intelligent,” Antony says. “For him beauty was great but there had to be some brains if it was going to hold his attention.” His attraction to Miller, then, was instant and intense — over the course of the next few weeks, he painted her six times (one of these paintings is in the Edinburgh show, alongside many of Miller’s photographs from the same trip).
In Miller, Picasso had recognised a fellow free spirit. Their attitude to love was definitely shared. They were — with Penrose’s approval — lovers as soon as they met, and Miller’s relationships had much in common with Picasso’s: she was bold about initiating them. When she bumped into Man Ray — deliberately — in a bar near his Paris studio, by her own account she said, “ ‘My name is Lee Miller and I’m your new student’ . . . He said he didn’t take students and, anyway, he was leaving Paris for his holiday. I said, ‘I know, I’m going with you’ — and I did. We lived together for three years.” Her relationships often had the same kind of fuzzy edges that the painter specialised in. She was still with Man Ray in 1931 when she met and embarked on an affair with her future first husband, the Egyptian diplomat Aziz Eloui Bey, on a skiing trip to St Moritz. She was still married to Eloui when she met and immediately set off on a two-week trip with Penrose.
Eloui evidently understood the kind of woman he had married. After her return to Paris in 1937, Miller wrote to him that, “I want the utopian combination of security and freedom”. Not that the men around her were always so accommodating about it; as the painter Eileen Agar later said of the surrealists: “The men were expected to be very free sexually, but when a woman like Lee Miller adopted the same attitude, the hypocritical upset was tremendous.”
Picasso probably never knew that Miller’s attitude to sex was born at least partly out of a horrific childhood event. Aged seven, Miller was raped by a family friend and contracted gonorrhoea, which at the time was treated with an extremely painful and invasive procedure. During the counselling that followed her ordeal, the message was conveyed to the traumatised girl that love and sex should be considered separate. It was an attempt to emancipate the child from shame that informed her attitude to sex for the rest of her life, to an extent probably not anticipated by a well-meaning psychologist in 1914. Gertie Wissa, a friend from Miller’s time in Cairo, where she lived for a while with Eloui, recalled her as behaving “like a man”, telling her friend, “If I need to pee, I pee in the street; if I have a letch for someone, I hop into bed with him.”
The event also changed her personality and she became a rebel. According to her elder brother, John, the rape “changed her whole life and attitude — she went wild”. She was thrown out of so many schools that years later, a drive from New York to Poughkeepsie so that Penrose could meet her parents became a tour of all the establishments she’d been expelled from.
The depth of Miller and Picasso’s regard for each other can be seen clearly in one of the photographs on display in Edinburgh. The pair stand with their arms around each other in Picasso’s Paris studio, beaming into each other’s faces. The image is subtitled Liberation of Paris. Miller had arrived in the city with American troops as one of only six accredited female war correspondents on the day of liberation in 1944. The following day, she crossed Paris and found the artist in his studio. Until that moment, she had no idea whether he or any of her friends had survived.
Picasso was overwhelmed, Antony says, “and when he had finally finished hugging her and kissing her, and, she said ‘pinching my bottom and mussing my hair’, he stood back and said, ‘Incroyable, the first Allied soldier I should see is a woman and she is you!’ ”
The friendship endured for 36 years. Miller and Penrose, now married, would bring Antony to visit Picasso and his young family with Françoise during holidays, and in 1950 the painter took refuge from the press at their home, Farley Farm, when a peace conference he was attending in Sheffield was derailed. Several of Miller’s photographs from the visit are on display in Edinburgh, including one particularly touching shot of Picasso with Antony on his knee. “He smelt of Gauloises and cologne and those were very unusual fragrances for an English boy,” recalls Antony. “And he was great on the hugs and cuddles. I remember his tweed jacket was slightly scratchy.” Anyone who has seen Picasso’s works featuring the minotaur won’t be surprised to find that the painter was particularly taken with the farm’s bull, William. “William was normally very grumpy and didn’t like visitors, but for some inexplicable reason William suddenly became very docile and allowed Picasso to scratch his nose and talk to him,” Antony says. “Here was William, alpha male over his herd of 24 cows, pampered and every possible creature comfort seen to, and there was Picasso . . . there’s a similarity there.”
It was devastating for Miller and Penrose when in 1973, Picasso died. “It destroyed a constant source of wonder and joy,” Antony says. “My parents’ friendship with Picasso was a central part of their lives.” Penrose had become Picasso’s biographer and the curator of key exhibitions — he was regarded as “the Picasso man”. “It is fortunate [Lee] loved them both as much as she did. A lesser devotion would not have allowed her to tolerate Penrose’s obsessive passion for Picasso,” Antony adds. But it was Miller who was the linchpin. “Roland always noted that of the visits he made to Picasso, the ones that didn’t go well were the ones when Lee wasn’t there. Roland would go with a whole lot of projects in which he wanted Picasso’s support — he would be trying to negotiate for the sale of The Three Dancers for the Tate or for an exhibition or something, and if Lee was there she would lighten things up. She was a great bridge because she was highly intuitive but she also had that very American cut-through-the-crap kind of routine. She could get away with it because nobody expected European manners from her.” Least of all her dear friend, Picasso.
Lee Miller and Picasso, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh (0131 624 6200), May 23 to September 6
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The new educational website (Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™ as a writing and speaking business of empowerment) will be announced.
Meanwhile, enjoy the free writing and consciousness work on this website. It was written with blood, sweat and tears. The story of both my man (men) and myself as we struggled to re-define all that is relationship and marriage, the mutual journey of escape and evolution out of The Patriarchal Tribe.
The self discovery that took us from female slavery and male confusion and fascism into a society that was left behind a long time ago, when The New World Order took over and put men in charge, when they didn't even want it, by all that I have seen. Other than in sex as is the primal partnership. Our exploration is here. The world of Bluebeard Male Supremacy™ through to the Sacred Whore and High Female Esoteric Serpent Priesthood Society™, again, with men as the beloveds. Equality, Liberty, FRATERNITY. The New New World. Again.
The journey of how it didn't work. How Earth is a concentration camp for women, with men as the willing Nazi officers in charge. This apparently is the world of love.
The carnage of discovery is here. The journey of slavery to freedom and the final stance of separatism as it had to be.
Men and women will never converge without pain and strife. Earth has taken care of that and men are willing instruments of evil.
Men. The Keepers of Hades.
The success is self actualisation + self determination + freedom + separatism for women.
Women have to leave men and leave men forever.
The unredeemable must be left alone. They will not redeem. They will not leave behind their legacy of Plantation Ownership, High Priestess Killing or Nazi Loyalties.
Earth is a concentration camp for women. They like it that way. They can have it.
Women have to leave all that is the tribe, if they ever want to be happy, strong, confident or successful and they have to do it alone, alone, alone and alone. Well, not alone. Just not with men.
Paradoxically, women also have to reclaim their lost leadership. A leadership that men want but don't know about other than in the patriarchal tribe context. A leadership that takes grace, forgiveness and knowledge and fighting for your life too. True female leadership. True Lost Female Priesthood leadership for all.
Please feel free to read the material on this blog. My writings, plus work from other consciousness teachers too. My Manifesto for Human Rights (Especially Female) in Relationship and Family.
These writings will be produced in book form. Poetry Polemics for a better world of love, independence, sex and individuation. And true companionship and family. Power to the people, indeed. Together.
Thank you.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
True love or love of any kind between men and women is a visionary miracle that will never happen. Good and evil will never merge. Earth is a barren planet of pain. And one that we have to all work very hard to evolve from. So the men can be left behind on their own. They like staying evil. They can have it. We deserve so much more and for that we all have to ascend and ascend, so that we can finally truly leave.
Earth is for the evil. Let's make sure they are the only ones left on it.
But before that, make sure you thrive. Face the agony and shock and leave men. Live a life and earn money. You deserve it. The myth of love remains just that. An illusion to keep us poor. There will never be love. Only poverty, hardship and pain. Men are pain. The last, unspoken evil on this planet. And the first.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
I will never promote convergence between women and men again. As is said, if you are not there during the tough times, you have no right to be around during the good times. Men are vicious patriarchal fascists. Men are simply evil. Men are emotional degenerates. Women either die or survive. But never promote convergence again. Too much trauma, too much shock and too much pain. Men must die. There can be no real convergence on earth. This feminist is done. I have left the world of men. I will not be returning again. Not in this life. Not ever. Men are the evil of this earth. We choose whether to even try and converge or not. And then, we are done.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
I am no longer a woman. I am a feminist and very proud of it. Men made me that way. Men are the irrevocable evil of this world. Vicious Patriarchal Fascists. The real cunts of this world. They must not be loved anymore. Women can only be slaves or feminists. There is nothing in between. Earth is evil. We are not. Either we collude with that evil or die, trying to do so while remaining true to ourselves. Or we see the truth. And that's that. The world of women is true. The world of men is nothing. And that is that. The 'veil of illusion' indeed. Men are evil. And this planet does all it can to promote it. Find your worth. Leave men. And become the greatness you were born to be. Never love men again. They do not deserve our energy. Our energy is of The Divine. Men (other than the tiniest percentage of men who are like us) are at the bottom of evolution. Evil. Don't let them 'evil' you.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
Women earn ten percent of the entire world's income. I can show you why.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
Feminism is a non belief in female slavery. Ergo, all women are feminists. Whatever level we live it on, we are all the same. We don't believe in female slavery. Men do. That is the truth of feminism. And it has not even begun. Men believe more in female slavery today, than they ever did. It's called the backlash. To them, a feminist is a manhater. Man is therefore, in their words, synonymous with slaver. Women hate men who want women to be slaves. Ergo, women have to hate men. Because all men are unconscious slavers. An unconscious anything is the most dangerous kind of being on this planet. Men are unconscious slavers. Woman or feminist, they will still hate us. Men hate women. They just don't know that they do. We, however, finally, do.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
Ascension and Power for Beings of Light
Self love and self therapy and self purification. These are the elements of the first journey.
The second is what you do about everyone else. It IS as bad as first thought.
I can show you how.
I can show you how to win. You deserve it.
By the time you have purified into the first harvest, you most certainly bloody well do deserve it.
It's everyone else that has to be dealt with then.
And for that we need to know why. And how.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
The Truth of Sex. The Truth of 'Love'
What they have done is to cut of OUR prophet and high priestess relationship with OUR God.
They seduced us with sexuality and love, THEIR way and cut us from the only thing we need to be happy. Spirit.
When you find out the visceral truth, that GOD is your MOTHER GOD, the whole world changes in you.
This goes way beyond self love and this is the WHY of why they burnt us.
And why the men just watched and did nothing. And why they still do nothing today.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
The Three Messages ::
The Female Divine Highest Love Intelligence Energy. God The Mother, The Universe. Plus, the SACRED WHORE HIGH PRIESTESS HIEROPHANT AVATAR VALKYRIE WIZARD MONARCHs™ as the only true High Priests, with a GNOSTIC spirituality for all.
There is no love on earth. We are all here to fight for it, or be hate. We are here to be profound, or to be shallow. To be adventurers of the soul, or turgid and needing security, to be humane or greedy, to BE love, or BE hate. Earth is hell. Hell, created by hate, for hate, of hate. Free will is to choose which way to go. Love, or hate. That is Existentialism. That is evolution. That is the advancement of the soul. Hate to love. And nothing less. The conquering of evil by good. The light must push out the dark. The light must win.
This is a consciousness movement of Self Actualisation and Alchemy into Inner and Outer Power. It is also a movement against Evil. A movement for freedom and against evil. And evil is unlike anything you could have ever imagined it to be. The greatest loves and likes of your life. The mix of dark and light on Earth. The mix that creates the hell that is earth. The mix that creates false hope for years and that takes so much of our energy. And yet the mix that has to be entered, to be utilised and integrated and understood and made part of the whole. The mix that has to be dealt with one day, so that the pure hate (non love) of this world can be vanquished forever. As is our destiny. To freedom.
My Business Is Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
My Business Is Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
Feminism is not feminism. Feminism is anti slavery. They call us control freaks and that has to be watched. However, in the context of the truth, it is a ridiculous statement. It is the oppressor, calling the courageous campaigner for freedom and equality, the terrorist.
Feminism is not 'man hating'. Feminism is not feminism. Feminism is the movement against slavery. Humanitarianism is the same. Slavery must not exist in any form on earth. Slavery is everywhere.
From unpaid work in marriage to unpaid work in the family, to minimum wage in the market to a hundred other arenas, slavery is the way of earth.
Feminism and humanitarianism are the movements against it. Slavery is fascism. Fascism is everywhere. We just don't know it. They made sure that we don't know it. Now we do. And we will forever.
Society calls it bullying. Society calls it unfortunate, while propping it up in every single second, across the world. Fascism must die. Fascism will die. Fascism is to die.
That is World Ascension. The end of fascism.
My Business Is Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The point of this planet is to find out what we are not, so we can find out what we are.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The journey to the breaking of one's lower self into one's great self. The actual journey. That is my business. Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. Turning oneself into gold and honey and authentic power. The pain of transformation, the shock and the trauma and terror and resistance of it. The path to heaven on earth. That is my business. THAT part of it. The crucifixion and disability of Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. The pain of it.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Notes From A Python :: Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The High Serpent Amazonian Esoteric Hierophant Female Priesthood, Consciousness Society™
Humanity then is this. There are two peoples on earth. Well, three, but the third is an exaggeration of one of the two peoples. The purest evil. The two peoples on earth are afflicted with the same thing. A belief in slavery.
There are two emotions and states of being on this earth. To either believe in slavery or to believe in love.
These inherent, emotionally entrenched and soul sickness beliefs are man made. Totally, MAN made. A belief in slavery which came, debatably from the third group. The pure evil. In fact, let's not use the word, pure, let's use the word complete.
The third group, the complete evil, brought slavery to earth. The two groups, the executioners and the vulnerables are both afflicted with the same thing and the journey to leave that - if you can and if you want to and if it is your time on earth to do just that, which you will not find out until you give it a try - is the journey to alchemise the self into a new self, Second Existence, Soul.
To heal the soul's sickness, the ego, out of slavery, either as an enforcer bastard or bitch, or as a slave who is enslaved against her or his will and from birth, is the greatest healing and evolutionary journey you will ever make on this fucked up planet. A planet of slavery.
Those who do not make it basically do not believe in love over slavery. Those who do, do. Simple as.
Change takes motivation. If you unconsciously want to remain a slave, there can be no judgement. To leave the mentality of 'mental slavery' is gigantic. And the Odyssey that I have made and many before me and many to come after me too, if I can do anything about it. To leave the mentality of slaver is gigantic too.
And only for the pure of heart. Alchemy is easy. Motivation and the stamina and the intelligence to find the education to eject the sick ego are the issues. Especially as this is The Lost Knowledge on earth, deliberately implemented by the complete evil.
Slavery or love. The two choices on earth. And whichever one that's left on the table, it is up to that individual to come to terms with what their choice is and what indeed, their soul choice for this lifetime is. Love or slavery. You cannot have both.
'You cannot be a host to God and a hostage to your ego' says Wayne Dyer.
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™ is the politics behind that. Ascension is pure politics. Hierophant is the politics of spirituality. Hierophant is me.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
Natural Born Mystic™
Misogyny is sadism against women. An unconscious hijacking and a conscious will to maintain it.
Tyranny and sadism. Misogynists. Slaves of Sauron (Tolkein's Lord of the Rings). Wifebeaters.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Natural Born Mystic™
An Hierophant is an interpreter of sacred mysteries and arcane principles.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Natural Born Mystic™
'Respect' as fear.
'The Accomplished Female' = the only thing that the male patriarch can deliver as 'love'. Men do not tolerate women earning money. They want slavery to instil FEAR. Fear as 'respect'. Fear is not 'respect'.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The secret enemies of psychological warfare. From within and without. Bringing the darkness of evil into the light. Immense self belief, intelligence and courage, plus wizardry. In other words, 'naming it and shaming it and letting it go' and re-programming the mind from any belief to another. To evolve.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Consciousness. The politics of the 21st century. The Lost Knowledge. Forget trying to change the world. Change yourself. It changes your own world that changes THE world.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Sexuality, non religious 'Wizard' and 'Witch' spirituality (the Gnostic intelligence of esoteric and consciousness exploration, ie wisdom and love) and human rights are the least fashionable things and the most uncomfortable things on the planet. And the things human beings have been damning and condemning for 8000 years. And the things that most people are absolutely fascinated by. What a shame. How bourgeois. How ordinary. How ego.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™
The Return To The Source. Ascension.
The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™. When we were giants. All of us. When you did more than rape me.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Neo Feminist™, Post Tribe Social Reformer™ and Sacred Sexualist™. Human Rights Healer. Metaphysical Philosopher, Writer, Spiritual Intelligence Teacher, Hierophant (Interpreter of The Universe) and Mentalist Self Actualiser.
I can help you grow power, from nothing.
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Witches are healers. Witches are the Love Healers and SOURCErers of The Lost World, when we were the giant warriors. We were good and so were were you. 'The World of Men'. The Tribe of Misogyny and Bourgeois™.
Gives us all a bad name. And poisons all hearts.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Spiritual power = emotional power = emotional intelligence = mental intelligence = re-programming of the whole self = spiritual intelligence = The Lost Knowledge™ = power = The New World.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
The Company
Writer, Speaker and Enlightener, Amera Ziganii Rao, is now putting together a comprehensive and unique programme of Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. A programme of learning that is specifically about one particular kind of woman. And one particular kind of man. The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, and the true society that they come from and the one they, in particular, she can and has to return to and that anyone can join her and him in. This is about Paradise on Earth.
This is about The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, and the Alchemy and Liberation and Humanity that is for all as a result of their healing and in particular, hers. This is about the kind of woman who is at the bottom of the pile in a Patriarchal Toilet Tribe from Hell Society™, the norm, the conventional world and the world of the Tribe. This is about the kind of man who is next in line from the bottom. The sensitive man and the female chattel. The High Priestess and High Priest of a profane society, that has long forgotten who they are.
This is about being at the bottom of the pile, for the forgotten and strangled shamans, and for her, the story of escape. Abused by her family, her friends, her men, her whole society, by the very nature of who she is and who they are and what has happened on this Earth. It is about women of love, of Spirit and of sex. It is about men of love, of Spirit and of sex. It is about the Cinderellas of this world. It is about the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™. Who she is and how, loving her is the secret to Paradise on Earth and how we have been living a lie for 8000+ years. A lie of male (non High Priest) religion with a male ‘God’ and with Patriarchs and Patriarchal types and Matriarchs and Matriarchal types ruling over us and making our lives hell, all in the name of family, the tribe and the way things are and should remain. Hate, fascism and profanity. A sick society that vilifies, more than anyone else, the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, just because it was told to. A sick society that calls her Eve. A sick society that has forgotten who we all are, let alone the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™. This is about us remembering and knowing who WE are.
This is a programme of healing for the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, to take them and particularly, her, from monstrous levels of low self esteem and lack of self knowledge, back to herself and it is a programme for all those who truly want to love her, and indeed, him. This is a programme for the greatest carers on Earth, who are vilified, destroyed, ridiculed, ignored, abused, used, misused and hated for being everything that those who would steal from us are not. This is a programme to turn Cinderellas into The Sacred Whore High Priestesses and for anyone who wants to love her or live by the values of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™. And this is a programme to turn sensitive men into Sacred Whore High Priests™ and for anyone who wants to love him and live by the values of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and High Priest Society. Love, humanity, Spirit and sex. This is a programme to reverse 8000+ years of witch burning, women hating and healer ridicule. This is about the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and all those who would love her and live by her values.
This is about the chance for Paradise on Earth. This is a programme for the most beautiful, kind hearted, wounded women and men on this planet. A programme of how to implement a system of how to beat life, how to survive life and how to resurrect from the grief that is a true life. Alchemy and Liberation and Humanity of the lower mind into the higher mind, the soul and the inner heart and therefore one's true, confident, ‘happy’, successful, creative, sexual, sensual, individual, intelligent, emotionally healed, capable of loving and being loved self. How to turn grief into creation and survive and thrive, despite all the shit, all the pain and all the hurt. How to live in a world of madness, hollowness and cruelty and how to be a winner. How to stand up for oneself and to take back the power that has been stolen from anyone with heart, Spirit and sex. The art and science of Alchemy.
This is a programme, based on my scholarly and non scholarly work over 15 years (so far), if not for my whole life, and my extensive and intense, visceral experiences of self transformation from resignation, cynicism and despair to a state of relative bliss, and above all, the right to be. The programme and the courses and my speaking and indeed my forthcoming book, will cover the method of change. The psychological, sociological, spiritual, cultural, political, emotional and physical and even anthropological methods of change. Why we are here. Who the Sacred Whore High Priestess™ is and why she is here. And who the Sacred Whore High Priest™ is. Why we are here. Who we are and what we are and why we are. The beauty and glory of the truth. The meaning of life, no less. This will be on offer in the future.
My first book of consciousness, my first book of the spiritual politics of humanity, of authentic power and of self love and strength. A comprehensive series of online courses, live events and audio and visual material. Books, live events, CDs and DVDs. And one on one personal empowerment consultations. The Amera Ziganii Rao Method of Change™. The right to be and the way to have the right to be. And indeed, how to maintain the will to live without love. How to BE unconditional, self sufficient, self caring, self love. The right to be and the will to be and the unparalleled success that comes with that. The Lost Knowledge™. HOW to live. And how to heal others, the profane and the sick and the soulless. The others. My Business and that of any Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and Sacred Whore High Priest™, is Human Rights, The Right to a Sexual Society, Self Actualisation and Freedom.
My Business is To Overthrow Fascism, in the Home and in the Country. My business is also mastering destiny. Overthrowing the ultimate 'fascism'. Our journey on Earth and The Return To The Source. Our healing, our ascension and our redemption. Fate. The daily crucifixions of a true life, the challenges and the fury of being healers and people of love on a planet like Earth.
Submitting to the journey to liberate and evolve oneself, through following one's heart, however much heartbreak and devastation it leads to on the long long long journey to freedom and then the longer journey to happiness. 'Long Road to Freedom', as Nelson Mandela says. My business is always taking risks, never giving up and making the endless sacrifices it takes to become whole. Enlightenment, Nirvana and then Parinirvana and beyond. My business is pain. My business is bliss.
My business is seeing the truly glory of Spirit on Earth. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™ and all that it is. Spirit, humanity, sex and love again at last. And the end of our legacy as either servants or witches or unpaid carers or indeed, ignored mistresses, other women, other men even, and the weirdos that are at the bottom of society. This is our world and it is time to take it back and I can show you how. And that makes my life, truly, worth living.
I want you to feel the way I do. Alive, with the right to be and the belligerence to exist in this profane and male ‘God’ led world of male supremacy, female supremacy, domestic, casual fascism, tribe rules from hell, with beautiful and kind, love intelligence laden, female and male Cinderella warriors at the bottom, caring for everyone else and getting nothing but hatred, ridicule and isolation for it. The meek are already inheriting the Earth and I can show you how.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
I enter the magical hours of pure feeling, pure thought, pure imagination and I think and I write and I 'mysticise' the Universe. I escape at will, the truth of my humanless, Samurai solitude, and I pursue the truth of love in myself and in everyone else. I am philosopher. I am shaman. I am alone. I frontier the Soul to be spirit on Earth.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
To trust your soul is to have courage. The courage to ‘get out of the way’. It takes a commitment to courage, a changing of the very matter of one’s access to courage, one’s relationship with courage and becoming the total renegade of an individual you have to, to become soul. It is that rare. ‘Getting out of the way’ takes a commitment to love and loving and being of love, no matter what. And frankly, that means redefining what love is, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. Finding out what love really is and getting rid of the bullshit we think it is. Love. Soul. Power. It takes courage to be soul. Courage, courage and courage. The rest is easy. Soul is soul. Finally it is an absolute relief to get out of the way. The life of soul may be hair raising, treacherous and mind numbingly arduous. But it is a life of no regrets. Courage. The key to soul. Just give it a go. Wear that hat, say what’s on your mind, dream your dreams again, dream your dreams at all and just smile through the hate. Including one’s doubt. Courage. ‘Kill’ when you have to, especially yourself, and smile the rest of the time and cry when you need to. Always cry. Earth is a battlefield and crying is the way to win. Soul is a way of life. The natural way. Courage is ‘all’ it takes. We learnt the rules, only so we could break them. The rest is the art of life. Creation. Creating oneself again and again and again. Soul. The only way of life worth anything. Otherwise, we are just waiting to die. We don’t need to. We can live. It’s called soul.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Self esteem. True, authentic, self knowing, self esteem. The one that includes the sex, the primal, the primitive, the animal, the real. The one that includes humanity and a state of unconditional love. Non needing, non greedy, non controlling, non afraid, non negative and non inhumane and non angry. Self esteem. What ego really is, in its true essence. The physical vehicle of self esteem. The physical vehicle of action, reaction, mastery, ‘misstery’, love and war, tenderness and sexuality. Humanity and human. The beautiful, crafted, styled, educated, aware, sincere, active, visceral, sexual, super sexual, heart led, sensitive, humane, courageous and ethical, hopeful ego. The instinct. The intuition. The magic. The primal. The whole. The whole Soul.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
The Harvest
And then comes the great battle. The war for one's dreams. The mastering of the ego. The attainment of the harvest of one's inner life. Certainty.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2015
Amera Ziganii Rao is a former hard news journalist who is now turning professional with her art forms and indeed, her healing forms, after a long journey of inner searching, self teaching and exploring many layers and areas of both craft and wisdom. She is now working on her first book of philosophy and esoteric thought, and social, cultural and spiritual commentary. She is also showing her first photography collections. And last but most definitely not least, she is building a business to share her Sacred Whore High Priestess Society consciousness and empowering explorations to reach as many people as possible across the world. She is in her forties and currently lives in London.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
In the meantime, please enjoy this website. I have included many of the subjects I am covering, areas of experience and insight that I will be exploring to the fullest in my book, the courses and all the other work that is to come as a dramatist, novelist and essayist. I also of course, include many of the wise people on this planet, who have come long before me; authors, screen dramatists, playwrights, film makers, artists, and other enlighteners and grand carriers of the wisdom I have found the most helpful on my journey, to find peace and become enlightened. The seemingly impossible journey, in the face of oneself and one’s circumstances. People who have contributed massively to my healing on this mad journey called life, in this insane existence called The Universe. People who have helped to make me as good a carrier of wisdom as I in turn, can be. Thank you.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Copyright and intellectual property rights are serious issues. And legally protected. Please do not reproduce my work anywhere without due credit and obviously, never for financial gain. 'Big Sister' is watching you! Other than that, please continue to enjoy my original work and the work of (credited) others, for free, while I work on using my material in further professional formats. Thank you for your interest and support.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
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