Growing up in the seaside town of La Coruña in Galicia, Spain, Jose Maria Pier y Loures heard stories about how his father would play on the grounds of its lighthouse and chase pigeons on the plaza with the neighbor children.

One of those children, however, turned out to be more noteworthy than the others.

The little boy was named Pablo, but he would someday be known worldwide by another name – Picasso.

Pier y Loures, 63, who now lives in Fort Wayne, has a thirst for sharing his family’s connection to perhaps the most famous painter of the 20th century.

Pier y Loures, whose English is limited, is a 63-year-old retired banker and celebrated painter in his own right who developed a lifelong interest in Picasso because of their shared roots. Picasso spent about five years in La Coruña a child and young teen, just as his talent began to emerge, while Pier y Loures’ grandfather and Picasso’s father were neighbors and unlikely friends.

One of Pier y Loures’ most prized possessions is a photograph of his stern-looking grandfather in a suit flanked by his uncle and the young artist, then about 11 years old, in summertime clothing. The photo was taken by Picasso’s father, Don Jose Ruiz y Blasco.

Pier y Loures says his grandfather, a very conservative local banker, and Picasso’s father, a left-leaning instructor at La Coruña’s arts academy, would chat across their backyards.

“It would be like today someone from the tea party and a member of the socialist party (being friends),” Pier y Loures says through translation by his wife, Juanita, a resident of Fort Wayne since 1984.

“They disagreed on politics, but that didn’t stop them from building a relationship. They talked about their kids, daily life.”

Pier y Loures says, as boys, his father, who was several years younger than Picasso, went to art classes with Picasso and attended the same school in 1894. The two families were so close that when Picasso’s parents moved to Barcelona around 1895, they left a large antique brass mortar and pestle with Pier y Loures’ grandfather for safekeeping. The item inexplicably was never retrieved, and Pier y Loures still has it. He believes it may date from the early Christian era and be quite valuable.

Pier y Loures says Picasso’s house, across the plaza from the academy, has been preserved as it was when he lived there and is now open to the public. He is a longtime member of the Picasso Association in La Coruña and contributed some of the family lore to a book the association published about Picasso’s life.

Pier y Loures says he could not help but be influenced in his own work by Picasso, known for using his art to protest war, celebrate sensuality and expand visual language as the Father of Cubism. Followers of the art movement disassembled and reassembled familiar shapes and objects, believing they were otherwise so familiar that they had lost their ability to hold interest.

After studying art in school as a youngster, Pier y Loures says he put it aside to work in the family’s bank, eventually rising to president. But he later took up oil painting as a hobby, and since 1971 he has exhibited professionally in several galleries in Spain.

His work has been internationally collected, he says, and in 1991, he was honored for his art by Spain’s Queen Sophia. Like Picasso, he often signs his work with one name, Pier, his father’s surname. Picasso chose to honor his mother by using her name, he says.

When Pier y Loures lived in Spain, his paintings were mostly realistic and semi-realistic seascapes and landscapes. But since coming to the United States, he also has done several U.S. scenes, including a large semi-abstract painting of the Grand Canyon in luminous colors and a Manhattan skyline that hang in his dining room.

He also has been painting lately in a more abstract style using dark colors and cubist-like geometric shapes – he likens the large canvases to an “explosion of emotion.”

Pier y Loures met his wife, who was born in Texas and raised in Mexico, in 2001 when she was in La Coruña for a family wedding. The two became reacquainted a few years later when she returned for an extended visit when her first marriage, which brought her to Fort Wayne, ended in divorce. The two married in 2007, shortly after she returned to Fort Wayne and he came to visit her here.

Pier y Loures, whose most recent local exhibit was in December at ArtWorks at Jefferson Pointe, says his favorite painting by Picasso is lesser known than his masterpieces such as “Geurnica,” his collage-like protest of war. The painting is “Young Girl with Bare Feet,” and it shows a seated girl with large eyes and dark hair wearing a red dress. Her skirts are slightly lifted to show her toes, and she has a white towel draped around her shoulders. The realistic, Goyaesque portrait was done when Picasso was about 13 and kept in the artist’s personal collection until he died.

Local lore holds that the young Picasso had a big crush on the girl, Pier y Loures says, adding that the pose was likely inspired by the fact that children and ladies took off their shoes and stockings when they were at the beach in La Coruña.

Picasso wasn’t a famous artist when he did the painting, he says – just a school kid from his hometown. “It shows he was kind of mischievous. I like that,” he says.

“What’s important to understand about painting is it’s always about the artist’s feelings at the moment,” he adds. “The emotions are always there.”

rsalter@jg.net