The Painter

Life Story

A good name is better than riches

The Painter **

On 25 October 1881 a little boy was born in Malaga, Spain. It was a difficult birth and and to help him breathe, cigar smoke was blown into his nose! But despite being the youngest smoker ever, this baby grew up to be one of the 20^th century’s greatest painters – Pablo Picasso.

Picasso showed his truly exceptional talant from a very young age. His first word was lapiz (Spanish for pencil) and he learned to draw before he could speak. He was the only son in the family and very good-looking, so he was thoroughly spoilt. He hated school and often refused to go there, unless his doting parents allowed him to take one of his father’s ept pigeons with him.

Apart from pigeons, his great love was art, and when his father, who was an amateur painter, got a job as a drawing teacher at a college, Pablo went with him. He often watched his father painting and sometimes was allowed to help. One evening his father was painting their pigeons when he ahd to leave the room. He returner to find that Pablo had completed the picture, and it was so amazingly lifelike that he gave his son his own palette and brushes and never painted again. Pablo was 13.

From then onwards there was no one stopping him. Many people realized that he was a genius, but he disappointed those who wanted him to become a traditional painter. He was always breaking the rules of artistic tradition and shocked the public with his strange and powerful pictures. He is probably best known for his “Cubist” pictures, which used only simple geometric shapes. His paintings of people were often made up of triangles and squares. His work changed our ideas about art, and to millions of people modern art means the work of Picasso. Guernica, which he painted in 1937, records the bombing of that little Basque town during the Spanish Civil war, and is undisputedly one of the masterpieces of modern painting.

Picasso created over 6000 paintings, drawings and sculptures. Today a Picasso costs several million pounds. Once when the French Minister of Culture was visiting Picasso, the artist accidentally spilt some paint on the Minister’s trousers. Picasso apologized and wanted to pay for them to be cleaned, but the Minister said, “No, please, Monsieur Picasso, just sign my trousers!”.

Picasso died of heart failure durind an attack of influenza in 1973.

Ex.1. Choose the right answer

1. What was Pablo’s first word?

1. Sculpture;

2. Art;
3. Van Gogh;
4. Lapiz.

2. What was his first serious painting?

1. The picture of pigeons;
2. Guernica
3. A Cubist picture;
4. The self-portrait.

3. What is he best known for?

1. His sculptures;
2. Cubist pictures;
3. Drawings
4. Still lifes.

4. Why did his work change the idea of modern art?

1. Because he didn’t paint people;
2. As he was breaking the rules of artistic tradition;
3. He often painted historical events;
4. He only painted pigeons.

5. Who was visiting Picasso once?

1. The USA President;
2. The Italian Prime Minister;
3. Queen Elizabeth II;
4. The French Minister of Culture.

Ex. 2. What fact of Picasso’s biography has impressed you most of all? Think of some famous, surpsing, extraordinary facts about celebrities and tell abot them to your groupmates.

Ex. 3. Role play. Make up dialogues based on the situations below

1. You are a famous singer who is being interviewed at a popular TV talk show.
2. You are an actor presenting a new film at a conference. There are a lot of “yellow press” journalists at the conference who are more interested in your private rather than professional life.
3. You are a journalist working at the biography of a famous footballer. You have just several minitutes for the interview. What would you like to ask most of all?

Ex.4. Tell about some celebrity without saying his or her name to your groupmates. Choose the facts that can help to guess who he or she is. You mau focuse on the following points:

• Is he/she alive/ dead?
• What is a person famous for?
• What do you know about his or her life?