Pablo Picasso was the first child of José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López.
Picasso's father, José Ruiz y Blasco, was himself a painter, and for most of his life a professor of art at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts and a curator of a local museum. It was from his father that Picasso learned the basics of formal academic art training, such as figure drawing and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art schools throughout his childhood, often those where his father taught, he never finished his college-level course of study at the Academy of Arts (Academia de San Fernando) in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.
Picasso's first painting at age 8, Picador (1889).
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona days who, for many years, was Picasso's personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as rarely seen works from his old age that clearly demonstrate Picasso's firm grounding in classical techniques.
Picasso used harlequins in many of his early works, especially in his Blue and Rose Periods. A comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, the harlequin became a personal symbol for Picasso. During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a motif which he used often in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly because from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and appears in Picasso's Guernica.