Quiz of the Day
Picasso & Modern Art
Sunday, 25 October 2026
Marking Pablo Picasso's birthday (October 25, 1881) — a tour through modern art movements, famous paintings, and the iconic artists who reshaped the 20th century
1. In which country was Pablo Picasso born?
- France
- Spain
- Portugal
- Italy
Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Spain, though he spent most of his adult life in France. He remained a Spanish citizen his entire life and never became a French national. His art was deeply shaped by both cultures.
2. Picasso co-founded which revolutionary art movement alongside Georges Braque?
- Cubism
- Surrealism
- Fauvism
- Impressionism
Around 1907–1908, Picasso and Georges Braque developed Cubism, which broke objects into geometric facets and showed them from multiple viewpoints at once. Braque later said the two artists were 'roped together like mountaineers' during those pioneering years. It became one of the most influential movements in Western art.
3. Which 1937 Picasso painting depicts the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War?
- The Old Guitarist
- Girl Before a Mirror
- Guernica
- The Weeping Woman
Guernica, painted in stark black, white, and grey, protests the aerial bombing of the town of Guernica in 1937. The enormous canvas is about 3.5 metres tall and nearly 8 metres wide. It now hangs in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
4. Picasso's groundbreaking 1907 proto-Cubist painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' is housed in which museum?
- The Uffizi, Florence
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- The Louvre, Paris
- The Prado, Madrid
'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' depicts five female figures with faces partly inspired by African and Iberian masks, shocking viewers when it was first shown. It is considered a crucial breakthrough toward Cubism. The painting has been part of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1939.
5. Picasso's melancholy, monochrome 'Blue Period' was followed by a warmer phase named after which colour?
- Grey
- Rose
- Gold
- Green
The Blue Period (roughly 1901–1904) featured somber blue-toned scenes of poverty and despair. It gave way to the Rose Period (roughly 1904–1906), full of warmer pinks and oranges with circus performers and harlequins as favourite subjects. The shift coincided with an improvement in Picasso's personal circumstances in Paris.
6. Which Spanish Surrealist painted 'The Persistence of Memory', with its famous melting clocks?
- Salvador Dalí
- Joan Miró
- Diego Velázquez
- Juan Gris
Salvador Dalí painted 'The Persistence of Memory' in 1931, and its soft, drooping pocket watches became one of Surrealism's most recognisable images. The small canvas measures only about 24 by 33 centimetres. It has been held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934.
7. Andy Warhol, famous for his Campbell's Soup Cans, was a leading figure of which movement?
- Cubism
- Pop Art
- Dada
- Abstract Expressionism
Andy Warhol became a defining figure of Pop Art, which drew on advertising, celebrity, and mass-produced consumer goods. His 1962 work '32 Campbell's Soup Cans' presented each of the brand's varieties then available. He famously ran a New York studio known as 'The Factory'.
8. Which American artist is best known for his 'drip' technique and Abstract Expressionism?
- Willem de Kooning
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Jackson Pollock
- Mark Rothko
Jackson Pollock laid huge canvases on the floor and poured, dripped, and flung paint across them, earning the nickname 'Jack the Dripper'. This all-over, gestural approach became a hallmark of Abstract Expressionism. He rose to fame in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
9. Piet Mondrian, known for grids of black lines and primary colours, belonged to which Dutch movement?
- Bauhaus
- Futurism
- Dada
- De Stijl
De Stijl ('The Style') was founded in the Netherlands in 1917 and championed pure abstraction using straight lines, right angles, and primary colours. Piet Mondrian was its most famous painter, alongside co-founder Theo van Doesburg. The movement's influence spread widely into architecture and design.
10. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is best known for which anguished 1893 painting?
- The Scream
- The Kiss
- The Dance of Life
- The Sick Child
Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' shows a figure clutching its face against a swirling orange sky, an early icon of Expressionism. Munch created several versions in paint and pastel between 1893 and 1910. He said the idea came to him while walking as he sensed 'an infinite scream passing through nature'.
11. In which Spanish city was Pablo Picasso born?
- Barcelona
- Málaga
- Madrid
- Seville
Picasso was born in Málaga, on the Andalusian coast, in 1881. His father was an art teacher who gave him early training in drawing and painting. The city today is home to the Museo Picasso Málaga, dedicated to its most famous son.
12. The earlier, near-monochrome phase of Cubism (about 1909–1912) is usually called what?
- Analytic Cubism
- Orphic Cubism
- Synthetic Cubism
- Purism
Analytic Cubism broke subjects into intricate, overlapping facets painted in muted browns and greys, so forms almost dissolve into the background. It was followed around 1912 by Synthetic Cubism, which reintroduced brighter colour and pasted materials. Picasso and Braque developed both phases together.
13. Henri Matisse led which early-20th-century movement celebrated for its bold, unnatural colour?
- Baroque
- Minimalism
- Fauvism
- Realism
Fauvism erupted around 1905 with vivid, arbitrary colours applied straight from the tube, and Henri Matisse was its central figure. A critic mocked the artists as 'les fauves', meaning 'the wild beasts', and the name stuck. The movement was short-lived but hugely influential on later modern art.
14. Around 1912, Picasso and Braque helped pioneer which technique of gluing materials like paper onto a picture surface?
- Fresco
- Etching
- Encaustic
- Collage
Collage, from the French 'coller' meaning 'to glue', involves attaching materials such as newspaper, wallpaper, and fabric onto a work. Picasso and Braque introduced it into fine art during their Cubist experiments around 1912. Picasso's 'Still Life with Chair Caning' is often cited as an early example.
15. Vincent van Gogh, who painted 'The Starry Night', is most closely associated with which movement?
- Pop Art
- Cubism
- Rococo
- Post-Impressionism
Vincent van Gogh is a defining Post-Impressionist, using intense colour and swirling, expressive brushwork. He painted 'The Starry Night' in 1889 while staying at an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Largely unrecognised in his lifetime, he sold very few paintings before his death in 1890.