which had been buried under layers of routine, banality, formal education and convention. (É)  PicassoÕs father served as a close and early example. Moreover, his fatherÕs friends and acquaintances could not help but stimulate the young Picasso to seek his own temperament,  his inner self. Indeed, the conversations that he heard as a child between his father and his fatherÕs friends were mainly about art. (É) The blossoming of PicassoÕs genius, strictly speaking, took place between the age of twelve and thirteen in Corunna towards the end of 1894. (É) It was probably then that Don JosŽ gave his son a palette and paint brushes. (É)