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Pablo Picasso was probably the most influential modern painterof the 20th century. Born in Spain, he lived in France much of his life painting, sculpting, making ceramics, and doing graphic artwork. His style was quite avant-garde and unique, and he changed it man ....

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.... He was a superstitious, sarcastic man, sometimes rotten to his children, often mean to his women. He had contempt for women artists. His famous remark about women being "goddesses or doormats" has rendered him odious to feminists, but women tended to walk into both roles open-eyed and eagerly, for his charm was legendary. He was also politically lucky. Though to Nazis his work was the epitome of "degenerate art," his fame protected him during the German occupation of Paris, where he lived; and after the war, when artists and writers were thought disgraced by the slightest affiliation with Nazism or fascism, Picasso gave enthusiastic endorsement ....