Pablo R. Picasso is generally considered in his technical virtuosity, enormous versatility, and incredible originality and prolifically to have been the foremost figure in 20th-century art.
             Pablo Picasso delivered at 11:15 P.M. in Malaga, a city in southern Spain, on October 25, 1881. He almost died at birth. If it had not been for the presence of his uncle, Dr. Salvador Ruiz, the infant might never have came to life. He could not draw a breath, so his uncle blew cigar smoke into his face. It would be his first triumph over death. Picasso was the son of Jose Ruiz Blasco, an art teacher, and Maria Picasso y Lopez.
             Picasso was a genius at a very early age. Academically Picasso was an incredibly meager student and did not excel in math. He would draw in class rather than work, his attention span was very short. It was thought later that he had dyslexia. In 1895 a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona offered to trade positions with his father, so the family moved to La Coruna. Soon after the family settled down, his father decided it was time that Pablo undertook the formal study of art. As a faculty member his father pulled some strings. He convinced the school officials to allow his son to take the examination for admission into the advanced classes, which were meant for students far more sophisticated then Pablo. The exam required two charcoal drawings of living models. His uncle Salvador paid models to pose for him so that he could paint realistically. He completed his drawings within a weeks time, a quarter of the time most students took. An awed jury admitted the young candidate to the school immediately.
             He won a gold medal for his unbelievably realistic painting of a doctor, a nun, and a child at a sick woman's bed entitled "Science and Charity." In 1897 Picasso passed the entrance exam at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid.
             To be derived from other work of ...