Journalism, Caricature and Satirical Drawings in Early Picasso (1891–1895): The Awakening of Pablo Ruiz’s Critical Consciousness

Abstract

In Pablo Picasso’s formative period in A Coruna (1891–1895), where he was born as an artist, the child and pre-adolescent who at that time signed himself as Pablo Ruiz, already knowing he was a genius, pursued an intense programme of creative activity while devoting himself to drawing and painting. Making use of his facility for reproducing the world around him in images, he also proved to be an incipient devotee of journalism as an instrument of communication and social awareness, a satirical draughtsman and caricaturist, seeking to give his version of events, in line with the magazines and newspapers of the period, and displaying a critical ability unusual in a child, a committed gaze, not devoid of humour and sarcasm, which prefigures the later Picasso with his progressive views, acute intelligence, meta-ironic approach and support for great causes.