Using Picasso in the Primary School Classroom

Pablo Picasso was like a bull, very strong-willed, always looking for new challenges and never satisfied with his achievements. He had an insatiable appetite for creating new ideas and for loving the many women in his life. At the age of 5 he could draw brilliantly and by the time he was a teenager his paintings would not have looked out-of-place next to Rembrandt's. By the age of 19 he was asking 'why should I paint like this for the rest of my life?' so he abandoned academic painting and set about developing his own ideas and ways of painting and, as a consequence, completely changed the course of art in the 20th century.

Let's look at his life and work how it might be used in the classroom to stimulate debate. Picasso is a confident, extrovert character who works extremely hard and is constantly looking for new challenges, yet his personal life is full of contradictions. Here are some general points that could be made.