Pablo Picasso: From Málaga to Paris

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Málaga at 23:15 on 25 October 1881. His father was a painter of birds and other game, and the boy showed a gift for drawing early: his mother said his first words were "piz, piz", short for lápiz, the Spanish word for pencil. The house on the Plaza de la Merced where he was born is now the Museo Casa Natal, run by the Fundación Picasso, so you can visit the place where the story starts.

Visitor guidance: The Museo Casa Natal is on Plaza de la Merced; check opening hours on the foundation's website.

In 1891 the family moved to A Coruña in Galicia, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. The period ended in grief: in 1895 Picasso's seven-year-old sister Conchita died of diphtheria, and the family left for Barcelona.

Location precision: The sources name the city but no single address, so the pin marks A Coruña.

After Conchita's death the family moved to Barcelona, where his father took a post at the School of Fine Arts. Picasso passed the advanced-class entrance exam in a week, at just 13, and later called the city his true home in times of sadness or nostalgia. Els Quatre Gats, a café that opened on 12 June 1897 in the Casa Martí, became a meeting place for modernist artists, Picasso among them. It closed in June 1903 and was restored in 1989.

Visitor guidance: Els Quatre Gats is open again as a café in Barcelona's old town.

At 16, Picasso went alone to Madrid, to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the country's foremost art school. He disliked formal instruction and soon stopped attending classes. The Prado drew him more, and he especially admired El Greco. The academy was founded by royal decree in 1752, and its alumni include Salvador Dalí as well as Picasso.

Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900. Poverty was severe: in his early rooms much of his work was burned to keep the place warm. The Bateau-Lavoir at 13 Rue Ravignan, named by the poet Max Jacob, was a block of small unheated studios sharing a single water source, and Picasso lived and worked there. In his studio there he completed Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. Matisse dismissed it as a hoax, and the public first saw it in July 1916.

Visitor guidance: The building stands on Place Émile Goudeau in Montmartre and can be seen from the square.