Pablo Ruiz y Picasso {pee-kah'-soh}, b. Malaga, Spain,
Oct. 25, 1881, d. Apr. 8, 1973, was the most influential and successful artist of the 20th century.
Painting, sculpture, graphic art, and ceramics were all profoundly and irrevocably affected by his genius.
As the son of a
professor of art, Picasso's talent for drawing was recognized at an
early age. An advanced student at the Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts
from the age of 14, he experimented in his youth with nearly all of
the avant-garde styles current at the turn of the century, an early
demonstration of his lifelong ability to assimilate aesthetic ideas
and to work in a variety of styles. For Picasso, the meaning of art
was to be derived from other works of art, and not directly from
nature. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's work had a significant impact on
his early paintings, as did the work of Paul Cézanne. Their
influence, among others', can be detected in the paintings of
Picasso's "blue period" (1901-04), which was stimulated by his
exposure to life and thought in Paris, where he made his home after
1904. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903; Art Institute,
Chicago) he created evocative portrayals of blind, impoverished, or
despairing people in a predominantly blue palette. His use of blue as
a motif was apparently derived from the symbolic importance of that
color in the contemporary romantic writings of Maurice Maeterlinck
and Oscar Wilde, whose work often derived its force from depictions
of madness or illness. Although his palette and subject matter
changed when he entered (1904) what is called his "rose period,"
during which he painted harlequins and circus performers in a lighter
and warmer color scheme, an underlying mood of spiritual loneliness
and lyrical melancholy that marked his "blue" paintings was retained.
The paintings of this period, however, do display a classical calm
that contrasts clearly with the nervous expressionism of the blue
period.
The lyricism of
Picasso's blue and rose periods vanished abruptly in the next phase
of his career, during which he and Georges Braque independently laid
the foundations for cubism. Struck by the compelling simplicity of
pre-Christian Iberian bronzes and of African sculpture, he and Braque
began to work in a consciously primitive and monumental style that
Picasso explored in sculpture as well as in painting. By amalgamating
the simplified iconic forms of Iberian and African art with Cézanne's
reduction of the underlying structure of nature to a few basic
shapes, Picasso produced Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907; Museum of
Modern Art, New York City), which prefigured cubism.
After 1908,
Picasso joined with Braque and other like-minded artists to explore
the representation of three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional
surface by means of overlapping planes. This early phase of the
cubist movement, often called analytical cubism, is exemplified in
the painting Ambroise Vollard (1909-10; Pushkin Museum, Moscow) and
the sculpture Woman's Head (1909; Museum of Modern Art, New York
City). In the course of his visual analyses, Picasso found that those
fragments of naturalistic pictorial space and forms that remained
were becoming less and less apparent. By 1912, he, Braque, and Juan
Gris were introducing real materials such as chair caning and
wallpaper -- either the actual materials or painted facsimiles -- into
their works in what came to be known as collage. This synthesis or
reconstitution of reality, called synthetic cubism, proved to be of
fundamental importance to the development of modern art.
Theoretical cubism
soon became too formalized and dogmatic for Picasso. During the 1920s
he alternated cubist-inspired works such as The Three Musicians
(1921; Philadelphia Museum of Art) with depictions of monumental and
classically modeled figures such as his Mother and Child (1921-22;
Hillman Collection, New York City). Subsequently, through the 1930s,
he added certain aspects of surrealism to his work, including the use
of the double image to create a shifting frame of reference and the
idea of one object being metamorphosed into another. The tenets of
surrealism also suggested to Picasso the use of symbolic archetypes
(see symbolism, art) such as the minotaur, the horse, and the bull.
All these qualities were fused in his famous Guernica (1937; Reina
Sofia Museum, Madrid). Also during the 1930s, Picasso accomplished
his most important work in sculpture; dating from this period are
numerous influential works, including welded pieces composed of found
objects, bronzes cast from plaster, and maquettes for monumental
outdoor sculptures.
Yet another change
in Picasso's style is evident in more somber and less fanciful still
lifes, urban views, and portraits he executed while remaining in
Paris during World War II. After the war he moved to the south of
France, where he became interested in the classical cultural
tradition of the Mediterranean. Mythological daydreams of nymphs,
satyrs, fauns, and centaurs soon filled his works, as epitomized in
La Joie de Vivre (1946; Musée Picasso, Antibes). The postwar years
also marked a period of daring experimentation in lithography and
ceramics. Although he had made prints throughout his career, he did
not concentrate on that field until the late 1940s, when he embarked
on a series of innovations that resulted in a reevaluation of
printmaking as a means of expression. He gave a similar impetus to
contemporary ceramics; his unconventional handling of the medium
opened up possibilities that are still being explored.
Picasso's work of
the 1950s and '60s consisted for the most part of a reiteration of
the themes and styles he had developed previously, although he never
stopped experimenting with new materials and forms of expression. At
the time of his death, he was universally recognized as the foremost
artist of his era.
CGFA - Virtual Art Museum
Carol L. Gerten maintains an impressive image library of meticulously
scanned works from hundreds of renowned artists, including this collection
featuring 15 of Picasso's paintings.
Chronological Biography
PaceWildenstein Museum in New York offers this chronology of the artist's life,
and lists dozens of permanent Picasso collections worldwide.
Lost Masterpieces
This disturbing article from the Boston Globe exposes the scandal about numerous
masterpieces by French artists (including some by Picasso) which were stolen from
Jews by the Nazis and the French Vichy government during WWII, only to resurface
in the French museum system years later.
The Old Guitarist
In the permanent collection at The Art Institute of Chicago, this piece was painted by
a young and struggling Picasso in 1903 during his "blue period", when his subjects were
society's outcasts -- lonely figures whom he rendered in an all-pervasive blue that
creates a melancholy mood.
Online Picasso Project
Dr. Enrique Mallen, professor of modern and classical languages at Texas A&M,
provides a detailed biography and chronological art gallery for every year of
Picasso's life from 1881 to 1973.
Explore the fascinating history of the prophet from Provence,
Nostradamus.
Read the reviews of our carefully selected travel guides and
recommended reading, then click to save 20-40% on
books you purchase, with the convenience of home delivery.
Can't find your favorite French movies at the video store or
library? Check out our selection of videotapes and DVDs featuring
French movie icons like Depardieu, Deneuve, Montand, and many more.
Then click to
save 10-30% on your own personal copy delivered to your door!
Submissions
Host your web page with us!
DiscoverFrance.net actively encourages topical submissions from
students of French language & culture, educators, seasoned
travelers, American expatriates, and natives of France.
If you would like to share your experiences, knowledge or
research with thousands of our visitors and friends, please send
a note to the
webmaster!
Are you an individual or business with a web page on any topic
related to France -- arts, culture, entertainment, history,
language, tourism, etc. -- in English or French? Your site can
have an address of "www. discoverfrance. net/your_site" for less
than $10 per month! Get more hits by affiliating with other
francophile sites.
Tired of the Java commercial advertising windows and banners
imposed by the so-called "free" web page hosting services? At
DiscoverFrance.net, you can customize your page as you wish,
without any commercial requirements or programming inserted into
your HTML. Our web servers and Internet connections are fast,
too.
For more information, please contact our
sales staff!
