As visitors flock to Tate Liverpool’s Picasso exhibition, Laura Davis visits his childhood town of Malaga, in Spain

THERE’S a famous Jesuit motto – show me the boy at seven and I’ll show you the man.

At seven years old, indeed from the day he was born to the age of 13 when his moved with his family to Barcelona, Pablo Picasso was living in Malaga.

This small town, with its strict Catholicism and mixture of cultures, played a significant role in turning him into the artist that would fascinate, inspire and infuriate.

Back then it was a quieter place than it is today – before cheap flights and sangria tempted an army of Brits to Spain’s Costa del Sol.

During the final decades of the 19th century, due to failing iron and steel industry and bad grape harvests, the Malaga economy was failing. In 1884, three years after Picasso was born, an earthquake caused around 800 deaths and, the following year, a cholera epidemic killed another 1,700 people.

Yet, in the Plaza de la Merced, where his parents José Ruiz Blasco and Maria Picasso Lopez met, the boy played to a soundtrack of chattering servants and shouting salesmen selling homemade jams and milk straight from the goat.

It was in this square that he would have seen his first pigeons and doves – later an important symbol of peace in his art and a recurrent motif in Tate Liverpool’s exhibition, where they appear in pencil, oil paint, newspaper print and on posters for left-wing causes.

As an adult, Picasso would tell the story of how he perfected his technique.

It was 1894, several years after his father’s job had taken his family to Barcelona. Blasco, an accomplished bird painter and art teacher, was struggling to paint intricate details due to his failing eyesight.

Exhausted by his efforts, he chopped the claws of a dead bird and nailed them to a board. You paint them, he told his son, before heading out for a walk.

On his return, he was so astounded by Pablo’s great talent that he gave him his palette and brushes and vowed never to paint again.

Although it has been repeated many times by his biographers, some art historians believe the story was made-up or exaggerated by the artist who liked to help create the myth of “Picasso the genius”. His father certainly continued to paint for many more years.

Also on the Plaza de la Merced is the building where Picasso was born – a single floor of number 36 that is now a tiny museum. The front room has been restored to how it might have looked when the artist and his family lived there – the plain maroon walls and bare floorboards giving you a feel for the simplicity of his life.

A dried hydrangea blossom sits inside a white jug on top of a table as if ready to be painted as a still life.

It’s unlikely that Picasso created much art here, however, as in 1884 the family moved a few doors down to number 32.

Here he worked on View of the Port of Malaga (c1888-1890), a small picture copied from one of his father’s. He told his sister he had stolen paint from Blasco’s palette, reproducing it from memory by the light of a candle while crouching under her bed.

Also created around this time was The Yellow Picador (c1889-1890), the first evidence of the artist’s interest in bullfighting, which he watched at Malaga’s bullring.

In 1891, Picasso took up the post of professor of Drawing in La Corunna, and the family left Malaga.

However, he did return several times both as a child and as an adult.

Shortly before moving to Barcelona in 1895, heartbroken from the death of his youngest sister Conchita, he stayed with his parents at the home of his uncle, the doctor Salvador Ruiz Blasco.

They also spent the following two summers there – Pablo painting a series of landscapes and a portrait of his aunt, Josefa Ruiz.

These paintings demonstrated the beginnings of his desire to create works that went against accepted styles of art.

His final visit to Malaga was for New Year, 1901, when he frequented Restaurant Chinitas – a hang-out for loose women and prostitutes, these days a cheerful restaurant with paintings lining the walls.

There were two purposes for his trip – the first to help his painter friend Carles Casagemas recover from an unhappy love affair, the second to persuade his uncle to pay the fee required to exempt him from national service.

His drawings from the time reflect the atmosphere of the brothels and the cafes, as well as portraits of artists and a sketch of the sunk German frigate Gneisenau.

Picasso’s conservative family were uncomfortable with his Bohemian appearance and, after a quarrel, he was forced to stay in a hostel.

The damage was done – he would never return to his birthplace.

PICASSO Peace and Freedom is at Tate Liverpool until August 30.