Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter who experimented with multiple styles of art, and who was very involved in the artistic movements of his time. His works reflect each phase of his artistic styles and two of the most prominent of those styles were Cubism and Surrealism. Some of the themes in his art include poverty, Alienation, and war.
Biography
Pablo Picasso self portrait
Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881 to parents José Ruiz Blasco and María Picasso y Lopez.[1] From an early age he showed great promise in art, with his first large canvas painting, First Communion,being exhibited in 1896; at the time, Picasso was only 15 years old.[2] Under the guidance of his father, he learned academic techniques to help further develop his talent at the Schools of Art in Corunna and Barcelona. Picasso’s large canvas painting Science and Charity won a gold medal. Immediately following this time, Picasso began associating with bohemian artists that led him to make his first visit Paris in 1900. In 1901, Picasso began using his mother's maiden name when signing his pictures.
For the next four years, Picasso would be constantly traveling between Barcelona and Paris, all the while working on paintings and engravings. This time has become known as the Blue Period, as his work was noticeably melancholy and utilized a soft color of blue. During this period, Picasso dealt with such themes as: maternity, circuses, poverty, and alienation.[3] In 1904 Picasso moved to Paris and his work experienced a transition that marked the beginning of the Rose period. Most likely the result of his newly formed relationship with Fernande Oliverier, Picasso’s paintings began to move away from the cold, murky blues that had been dominating his work, into more mirthful shades of pink and red. By 1905 Picasso was still working in his Rose period, creating paintings like theFamily of Saltimbanques and//Garcon a la pipe//. During this time he commonly portrayed circus acrobats and harlequins, illustrating the influence of French life on his work.[4]
A friendship between Picasso and American artist Gertrude Stein emerged in 1905 with her move to Paris and his subsequent painting of her portrait. In 1906 a collection of African masks came to a Parisian museum exhibit and had a significant effect on the direction of Picasso’s art. It was also in this time-frame that Picasso met Henri Matisse, who was showing a similar interest in African art. In 1907 Picasso began working on the paintingLes Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Women of Avignon), which was inspired by his experience with the African sculptures and the death of the French artist Paul Cezanne. The painting broke away from traditional conventions and marked the early beginnings of Cubism, which Picasso helped found alongside Georges Braque. Throughout his lifetime, Picasso created more than 20,000 pieces of work.
Artistic Style
The Old Guitarist
Blue Period
The Blue Period occurred during 1901 and 1904. He made three trips to Paris between 1900 and 1902 before staying there for good in 1904. The French painters Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec influenced Picasso due to the themes and style of their paintings, their influence upon Picasso’s art is illustrated in his painting Blue Room. This painting also shows Picasso’s work evolving in the direction of the Blue Period. The Blue Period received it's name from the multiple shades of blue used in his work over the span of the next few years. During the Blue Period, Picasso’s works demonstrated human misery in the form of blind figures, beggars, alcoholics, and prostitutes. The influence of the Spanish artist El Greco is apparent in the extended bodies of the people in Picasso’s paintings during this time[5] .
La famille de saltimbanques
Rose period
The Rose Period occurred between 1904 and 1905. Picasso met Fernande Olivier after officially moving to Paris. Olivier influenced the themes, style, and mood of Picasso’s paintings by moving Picasso in the direction of the Rose Period. Picasso began to use red and pink in his work. During this period, Picasso focused on the circus which he was known to visit multiple times a week. An example of this is Family of Saltimbanques which he painted in 1905[6] .
Three Musicians
Cubism
Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, painted in 1907, demonstrated Picasso’s work moving in a new direction that is now thought to have been important in developing cubism. The present fragmentation in the piece was influenced by African sculptures and Cézanne. This painting was also part of cubism’s first phase which is referred to as analytic cubism. This particular style is evident in the painting Female Nude and the sculpture Woman’s Head. The painting was painted between 1910 and 1911 and the sculpture was sculpted in 1909. Cubism’s next phase began after 1912 and was called the synthetic phase. During this phase, Picasso’s forms underwent a transformation where they became large, flat, and bright. Picasso’s piece The Three Musicians is an example of this phase in cubism. Collage and papier collé are two of multiple techniques that were results of both phases of cubism by Picasso and others[7] .
Surrealism
In the mid 1920s, Picasso diverged from his earlier styles of cubism and classical works, to experiment with surrealism. This artistic movement is associated with the unconscious as a means to unlock the imagination. During this period, Picasso's paintings were much more erotic and expressive, and they often mimicked actual events that were occurring in his life. The painting Large Nude in a Red Armchair (1929), was painted when one of Picasso's romantic relationships was declining[8] . The shapes are contorted and melted, and the vivid use of color is a way to prompt the imagination.
Contemporaries/Movements
From right to left: Amedeo Modigliani, Picasso, and Andre` Salmon
While Picasso was in Barcelona, Spain, he regularly visited a cafe called the "Els Quatre Gats" (The Four Cats) which was where a lot of avant-garde artists met. There, Picasso met many young artists who shifted between living in Barcelona, but worked in Paris, because Paris was quickly becoming the city of artists, the city where artists went to make a name for themselves. The Avant-Garde artists are no exception, being drawn to Paris also. He followed the lead of his friends from 1900-1904, traveling between Spain and France, but eventually stayed in France[9] . While living in Paris, Picasso became friends with Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ambroise Vollard, Daniel Henry Kahnwiler, and Gertrude Stein.
Picasso's painting of Gerturde Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, an art critic, had moved to Paris in 1903, and lived there till 1914. It was in this period of time that she met Picasso as well as Henri Matisse, a French Painter. While Stein was in Paris she really helped jump start Picasso's, as well as many other artists, career by buying many of his pieces and, in 1905, commissioned him to paint a portrait of her. During the upwards of eighty sittings Stein and Picasso had together, they became good friends and Picasso had tried many times to paint her face. As many times as he did, he always ended up scrapping the idea because it didn't end up capturing her essence. After a while, he came up with a solution. He decided to go back to what he thought a more "primitive" style that had it's roots in an Iberian and ancient Roman Scripture. It made its way into his painting by having her face look more linear and flat and almost mask-like in how it reflects Stein, herself. By looking at her face, you can't really tell anything about her besides that maybe she looked slightly angry in the painting. Picasso was finally satisfied with this, and Stein hung this portrait of herself in her art gallery. Stein's friends would come over to look at the portrait and often comment that the portrait looked nothing like her. Picasso, who visited her gallery often, said to this criticism, "Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will,". Stein quoted this in The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas. Ironically, this portrait is the portrait Stein is known for[10] . Stein also did a complete portrait of Picasso, except this was not done in paint and canvas, it was done in words. The poem is entitled "If I Told Him" and was completed almost twenty years after Picasso's portrait of her. The poem has a lot of repetition of sound, and reads like Tender Buttons in the sense that it doesn't really have referential meaning, but it does contribute a lot to the poem. However, there are places in the poem, such as when she says, "As a resemblance to him," (the 'him' being Picasso) that make a lot of referential sense. Stein, in the poem takes many phrases and repeats them over and over again in way that it makes a kind of verbal cubism, which she also did in Tender Buttons. In much the way of the painters Cubism, it uses fragmentation and defamilization to give it a new light. In this poem she uses a lot of sonic connections (alliteration, assonance, and consonance) that help the reader guide their way through the moments and passages in the poem. You have a feeling that you know what's going on, but you're never really sure[11] .
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse and Picasso met in 1906, and were very different men. Matisse was twelve years older than Picasso, and had gone to Paris originally to study law, working as a secretary in a law office when he had abandoned it when he was twenty-two to study art, after falling ill and his mother using art to give him something to do. Matisse became very popular in 1896, the leader of the art style fauvism which was recognized by it's odd use of bold colors, his paintings in galleries[12] .They were introduced by Gertrude and Leo Stein, who had also started collecting Matisse's paintings as well. They didn't get off to a good start and didn't like each others paintings at first, and instantly became rivals, even though their art was torn from the same cloth, or "sleeping with the same muse," and Matisse himself once compared their rivalry to a boxing match[13] . He had come out with a painting Le Bonheur de Vivre, in 1907, and it had ended up being a brand new thing that no had seen before and no one knew how to react to. After seeing it, Picasso went right to work on what turned out to be Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso not being one to like being outdone[14] .For the rest of their lives they kept tabs on each other, and in 1917 when Matisse feel into an artistic slump, Picasso helped pull him out by parodying his paintings. They then created this kind of visual dialog and had their art play off of each other[15] .
Political Involvement
Guernica, 1937
By the 1930s, Picasso's art became heavily influenced by political strife at the time. Picasso joined the French Communist party during 1944. There was an international peace conference in Poland which Picasso attended. He received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government in 1950. However, Picasso's interest in Soviet politics dwindled despite remaining a member of the communist party until he died.
Guernica (1937)
One of Picasso's most notable works,Guernica, painted in 1937, was a direct response to the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The painting depicts Picasso's use of symbolism to make a political and artistic statement. Guernica was painted over the course of a month, from May to June 1937. Picasso made many revisions to the painting, once saying, "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance, while it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it"[16] . Months earlier, Picasso had agreed to paint the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, his inspiration for the piece only came after the horrific bombing of Guernica. At its showcase at the World's Fair, Guernica received mixed reviews by the public, for the painting was a strong reminder of the misfortunes in Spain, and it was also painted in a non-traditional, non-realistic way. The painting then went on a world tour to show others the brutality of war, sparking debate about its political and cultural meanings where ever it went. Consequently, Guernica was banned from Spain until 1981 when, after many negotiations, it finally arrived in Spain for the first time.
Analysis of Guernica
Guernica is full of symbolism and political opposition, with screaming figures and a mother holding her dead child, there is no doubt Picasso painted this mural with the terror of war on his mind. However, there is much debate over the exact representation of certain figures in the painting, such as the bull and horse. What are they doing there and what do they symbolize? One interpretation of the bull is that it symbolizes Spain, with its rich history and culture in bull fighting. Another is that the bull stands for the fascist government that controlled Spain, the bull being a strong, but at times, dark figure. The horse can be seen as a helpless animal. Considering there is a lance going through the horse, it could stand for the helplessness and mistreatment of the people of Spain. There is also the play of color in the painting. Everything is quite dark, and the absence of color adds to the dark terror the painting is meant to portray. One last notable symbol in the painting is the lightbulb above the horse. One interpretation is that the lightbulb represents the power of technology and its ability to kill masses of people. It is the only reference to 20th century technology in the painting. In Spanish, an electric bulb is called "bombia," a play on the word "bomb"[17] . All of these explanations can easily be applied to the painting, but no single explanation is correct and the painting will forever remain up to the interpretation of the viewer. Picasso himself never explicitly said what the horse and bull stood for, he only made one thing clear: it was an anti-war painting designed to provoke anger and sadness for those who viewed it.
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If you hold copyright to an image, and do not agree that its use accords with fair use practices,
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^Langton, John. "Picasso, Pablo." The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
^Melissa McQuillan. "Picasso, Pablo." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 20 Feb. 2012.
Biography
Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881 to parents José Ruiz Blasco and María Picasso y Lopez.[1] From an early age he showed great promise in art, with his first large canvas painting, First Communion,being exhibited in 1896; at the time, Picasso was only 15 years old.[2] Under the guidance of his father, he learned academic techniques to help further develop his talent at the Schools of Art in Corunna and Barcelona. Picasso’s large canvas painting Science and Charity won a gold medal. Immediately following this time, Picasso began associating with bohemian artists that led him to make his first visit Paris in 1900. In 1901, Picasso began using his mother's maiden name when signing his pictures.
For the next four years, Picasso would be constantly traveling between Barcelona and Paris, all the while working on paintings and engravings. This time has become known as the Blue Period, as his work was noticeably melancholy and utilized a soft color of blue. During this period, Picasso dealt with such themes as: maternity, circuses, poverty, and alienation.[3] In 1904 Picasso moved to Paris and his work experienced a transition that marked the beginning of the Rose period. Most likely the result of his newly formed relationship with Fernande Oliverier, Picasso’s paintings began to move away from the cold, murky blues that had been dominating his work, into more mirthful shades of pink and red. By 1905 Picasso was still working in his Rose period, creating paintings like the Family of Saltimbanques and //Garcon a la pipe//. During this time he commonly portrayed circus acrobats and harlequins, illustrating the influence of French life on his work.[4]
A friendship between Picasso and American artist Gertrude Stein emerged in 1905 with her move to Paris and his subsequent painting of her portrait. In 1906 a collection of African masks came to a Parisian museum exhibit and had a significant effect on the direction of Picasso’s art. It was also in this time-frame that Picasso met Henri Matisse, who was showing a similar interest in African art. In 1907 Picasso began working on the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Women of Avignon), which was inspired by his experience with the African sculptures and the death of the French artist Paul Cezanne. The painting broke away from traditional conventions and marked the early beginnings of Cubism, which Picasso helped found alongside Georges Braque. Throughout his lifetime, Picasso created more than 20,000 pieces of work.
Artistic Style
Blue Period
The Blue Period occurred during 1901 and 1904. He made three trips to Paris between 1900 and 1902 before staying there for good in 1904. The French painters Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec influenced Picasso due to the themes and style of their paintings, their influence upon Picasso’s art is illustrated in his painting Blue Room. This painting also shows Picasso’s work evolving in the direction of the Blue Period. The Blue Period received it's name from the multiple shades of blue used in his work over the span of the next few years. During the Blue Period, Picasso’s works demonstrated human misery in the form of blind figures, beggars, alcoholics, and prostitutes. The influence of the Spanish artist El Greco is apparent in the extended bodies of the people in Picasso’s paintings during this time[5] .Rose period
The Rose Period occurred between 1904 and 1905. Picasso met Fernande Olivier after officially moving to Paris. Olivier influenced the themes, style, and mood of Picasso’s paintings by moving Picasso in the direction of the Rose Period. Picasso began to use red and pink in his work. During this period, Picasso focused on the circus which he was known to visit multiple times a week. An example of this is Family of Saltimbanques which he painted in 1905[6] .Cubism
Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, painted in 1907, demonstrated Picasso’s work moving in a new direction that is now thought to have been important in developing cubism. The present fragmentation in the piece was influenced by African sculptures and Cézanne. This painting was also part of cubism’s first phase which is referred to as analytic cubism. This particular style is evident in the painting Female Nude and the sculpture Woman’s Head. The painting was painted between 1910 and 1911 and the sculpture was sculpted in 1909. Cubism’s next phase began after 1912 and was called the synthetic phase. During this phase, Picasso’s forms underwent a transformation where they became large, flat, and bright. Picasso’s piece The Three Musicians is an example of this phase in cubism. Collage and papier collé are two of multiple techniques that were results of both phases of cubism by Picasso and others[7] .Surrealism
In the mid 1920s, Picasso diverged from his earlier styles of cubism and classical works, to experiment with surrealism. This artistic movement is associated with the unconscious as a means to unlock the imagination. During this period, Picasso's paintings were much more erotic and expressive, and they often mimicked actual events that were occurring in his life. The painting Large Nude in a Red Armchair (1929), was painted when one of Picasso's romantic relationships was declining[8] . The shapes are contorted and melted, and the vivid use of color is a way to prompt the imagination.Contemporaries/Movements
While Picasso was in Barcelona, Spain, he regularly visited a cafe called the "Els Quatre Gats" (The Four Cats) which was where a lot of avant-garde artists met. There, Picasso met many young artists who shifted between living in Barcelona, but worked in Paris, because Paris was quickly becoming the city of artists, the city where artists went to make a name for themselves. The Avant-Garde artists are no exception, being drawn to Paris also. He followed the lead of his friends from 1900-1904, traveling between Spain and France, but eventually stayed in France[9] . While living in Paris, Picasso became friends with Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ambroise Vollard, Daniel Henry Kahnwiler, and Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, an art critic, had moved to Paris in 1903, and lived there till 1914. It was in this period of time that she met Picasso as well as Henri Matisse, a French Painter. While Stein was in Paris she really helped jump start Picasso's, as well as many other artists, career by buying many of his pieces and, in 1905, commissioned him to paint a portrait of her. During the upwards of eighty sittings Stein and Picasso had together, they became good friends and Picasso had tried many times to paint her face. As many times as he did, he always ended up scrapping the idea because it didn't end up capturing her essence. After a while, he came up with a solution. He decided to go back to what he thought a more "primitive" style that had it's roots in an Iberian and ancient Roman Scripture. It made its way into his painting by having her face look more linear and flat and almost mask-like in how it reflects Stein, herself. By looking at her face, you can't really tell anything about her besides that maybe she looked slightly angry in the painting. Picasso was finally satisfied with this, and Stein hung this portrait of herself in her art gallery. Stein's friends would come over to look at the portrait and often comment that the portrait looked nothing like her. Picasso, who visited her gallery often, said to this criticism, "Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will,". Stein quoted this in The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas. Ironically, this portrait is the portrait Stein is known for[10] .Stein also did a complete portrait of Picasso, except this was not done in paint and canvas, it was done in words. The poem is entitled "If I Told Him" and was completed almost twenty years after Picasso's portrait of her. The poem has a lot of repetition of sound, and reads like Tender Buttons in the sense that it doesn't really have referential meaning, but it does contribute a lot to the poem. However, there are places in the poem, such as when she says, "As a resemblance to him," (the 'him' being Picasso) that make a lot of referential sense. Stein, in the poem takes many phrases and repeats them over and over again in way that it makes a kind of verbal cubism, which she also did in Tender Buttons. In much the way of the painters Cubism, it uses fragmentation and defamilization to give it a new light. In this poem she uses a lot of sonic connections (alliteration, assonance, and consonance) that help the reader guide their way through the moments and passages in the poem. You have a feeling that you know what's going on, but you're never really sure[11] .
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse and Picasso met in 1906, and were very different men. Matisse was twelve years older than Picasso, and had gone to Paris originally to study law, working as a secretary in a law office when he had abandoned it when he was twenty-two to study art, after falling ill and his mother using art to give him something to do. Matisse became very popular in 1896, the leader of the art style fauvism which was recognized by it's odd use of bold colors, his paintings in galleries[12] .They were introduced by Gertrude and Leo Stein, who had also started collecting Matisse's paintings as well. They didn't get off to a good start and didn't like each others paintings at first, and instantly became rivals, even though their art was torn from the same cloth, or "sleeping with the same muse," and Matisse himself once compared their rivalry to a boxing match[13] . He had come out with a painting Le Bonheur de Vivre, in 1907, and it had ended up being a brand new thing that no had seen before and no one knew how to react to. After seeing it, Picasso went right to work on what turned out to be Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso not being one to like being outdone[14] .For the rest of their lives they kept tabs on each other, and in 1917 when Matisse feel into an artistic slump, Picasso helped pull him out by parodying his paintings. They then created this kind of visual dialog and had their art play off of each other[15] .Political Involvement
By the 1930s, Picasso's art became heavily influenced by political strife at the time. Picasso joined the French Communist party during 1944. There was an international peace conference in Poland which Picasso attended. He received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government in 1950. However, Picasso's interest in Soviet politics dwindled despite remaining a member of the communist party until he died.
Guernica (1937)
One of Picasso's most notable works,Guernica, painted in 1937, was a direct response to the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The painting depicts Picasso's use of symbolism to make a political and artistic statement. Guernica was painted over the course of a month, from May to June 1937. Picasso made many revisions to the painting, once saying, "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance, while it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it"[16] . Months earlier, Picasso had agreed to paint the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, his inspiration for the piece only came after the horrific bombing of Guernica. At its showcase at the World's Fair, Guernica received mixed reviews by the public, for the painting was a strong reminder of the misfortunes in Spain, and it was also painted in a non-traditional, non-realistic way. The painting then went on a world tour to show others the brutality of war, sparking debate about its political and cultural meanings where ever it went. Consequently, Guernica was banned from Spain until 1981 when, after many negotiations, it finally arrived in Spain for the first time.Analysis of Guernica
Guernica is full of symbolism and political opposition, with screaming figures and a mother holding her dead child, there is no doubt Picasso painted this mural with the terror of war on his mind. However, there is much debate over the exact representation of certain figures in the painting, such as the bull and horse. What are they doing there and what do they symbolize? One interpretation of the bull is that it symbolizes Spain, with its rich history and culture in bull fighting. Another is that the bull stands for the fascist government that controlled Spain, the bull being a strong, but at times, dark figure. The horse can be seen as a helpless animal. Considering there is a lance going through the horse, it could stand for the helplessness and mistreatment of the people of Spain. There is also the play of color in the painting. Everything is quite dark, and the absence of color adds to the dark terror the painting is meant to portray. One last notable symbol in the painting is the lightbulb above the horse. One interpretation is that the lightbulb represents the power of technology and its ability to kill masses of people. It is the only reference to 20th century technology in the painting. In Spanish, an electric bulb is called "bombia," a play on the word "bomb"[17] . All of these explanations can easily be applied to the painting, but no single explanation is correct and the painting will forever remain up to the interpretation of the viewer. Picasso himself never explicitly said what the horse and bull stood for, he only made one thing clear: it was an anti-war painting designed to provoke anger and sadness for those who viewed it.External Links
Blue Period
Guernica
Guernica: Testimony of War
The Old Guitarist
The Oxford Companion to Western Art
Pablo Picasso, Life and Work
Pablo Picasso website
The Student
Le Bonheur de Vivre(The Joy of Life)
References
Images are used in accordance with fair use practices.
If you hold copyright to an image, and do not agree that its use accords with fair use practices,
please contact the wiki's creator and organizer.
"Pablo Picasso." The Art Story.org. n.p., n.d. web. 7 Feb. 2012.
"Pablo Picasso, Life and Work." Pablo Picasso. Google, 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2012.
"Gertrude Stein." Annenberg Foundation, 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2012.
"Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein." Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, 2012. Web. 30 Jan. 2012.