Pontevedra square

The Eusebio da Guarda, today a high school, is the centre in which Picasso studied secondary education, with bad grades, and Fine Art, with excellent ones. On the first floor of this building, he was taught for three years by artists such as his father, Román Navarro and Isidoro Brocos. He also held his first group exhibitions here.

Although my father doesn’t earn much money, three thousand pesetas a year, we have a maid who helps around the house, in exchange for bed and food. I also drew her portrait.  What a woman! One day the whole house almost burned down, because she left a brazier on.... She's not short of work:  just fetching water from the fountain... Because we don't have running water. And at the fountain, which is in Pontevedra square, you have to wait up to three hours at a time, and then carry the bucket full of water... What a chore!

I draw all the time. I think I’m already as good as Rafael, the Renaissance master… But it will take me a lifetime to learn to draw like a child… At the moment I’m following the advice of my father and my other professors in the School of Fine Art, like Román Navarro or Isidoro Brocos. All the School’s professors are very academic, except for Brocos, who has been in Paris and has some rather revolutionary ideas…

I get very good marks in Fine Arts, and I even appear on the honours list. I was worse off in high school, where Rhetoric and History were at drawn daggers. And French... I didn't even take the exams! Although I have a feeling that I'm going to end up mastering it... What I liked most at school was when they sent me to the punishment room: there I could draw, draw, and draw.

Now I'm drawing a faun. It's the first one I've drawn, but I'll paint fauns for the rest of my life... I like them: they are cheerful and whimsical, like me.

Authors of the text:
Elena Pardo and Rubén Ventureira