| Picasso’s Surrealism (1925 - 1936):
"Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all" - said Andre Breton, founder of Surrealism, a direction in art which aims to understand the real depth of artistic creativity through the penetration into the world of dreams and the unconscious.
In 1925, Picasso painted "The Dance". Aggressive, painful with deformed figures, it reflects a difficult period in the artist's family life and at the same time, proclaims a new turning point in his creative work. Picasso was very close to surrealism but he always chose his own path.
The works of Pablo Picasso during this period; "Bather Opening a Cabin" (1928), "Figures on a Beach" (1931), "Woman with a Flower" (1932) and others.
On a cold January day in 1927, Picasso met 17-yr old Marie Therese Walter.
He acquired a castle at Boisgeloup for her and there, she was the single model and heroine in several of his popular works, for example: "Mirror" (1932, private collection), "Girl before a Mirror" (1932, The Museum of Modern Arts, New York) and a sculpture was made using the painting "Woman with a Vase" (now the sculpture stands on his grave). In 1935, Maria Therese gave birth to a daughter Maya but by 1936, Picasso parted from both the women though he was not officially divorced from Olga Khokhlova till her death in 1955.
While studying in Marding, Picasso toured Paris for the first time, which was then considered as the European capital for the arts. In Paris, for several months, he visited all the museums without exception, studying paintings by the great artists: Delacroix, Toulouse - Lautrec, Van Gogh, Gauguins and many others. He was also attracted towards the arts of the Finnish and Egyptians, gothic sculpture and Japanese gravure. Pablo was interested in everything. During that time, in the first few years of his life in Paris, he met collector and trader of paintings Ambrose Vollard, poets Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire and many others. Pablo once again visited Paris in 1901 and in 1902 years and finally moved to live in Paris in 1904.
Picasso’s "Blue Period" (1901-1904):
Works, created in the period between 1901 and 1904 belong to "Blue Period". Gray-blue and blue-green deep cool colors, colors of sorrow and sadness were always found in the paintings, made during 1901 - 1904. Picasso called the "blue color as color of all colors". The frequent plots of these paintings - emaciated mothers with children, vagrants, poor and blind people. Most popular works of this period are: "Life" (1903), "Breakfast of a Blind Man" (1903), "L'ascete" (1904), "The Absinthe Drinker" (1901), "The Visit" (1902), "Mother and Child" (1903), "Old Beggar with a Boy" (1903), "Acrobar on Ball" (1904), "Tumblers" (1904).
Picasso’s "Rose Period" (1904 - 1906):
"Rose Period" is characterized by much more buoyant shades - ocherous and rosy and also stable thematic images - Harlequin, vagrant actors, acrobats ("Family of Saltimbanques" (1905), "Acrobat and Young Harlequin" (1905), "Joker" (1905).
Fascinated by comedians, who became models for his paintings, he frequently visited the Medrano circus; during this period, the Harlequin became a favorite character of Picasso. In 1904, Picasso met the model Fernande Olivier, who inspired him to create many significant works of this period. They lived a bohemian life in the center of Paris and in Bateau-Lavoir, Mecca for Parisian artists. This strange dilapidated building with dark stairs and twisting corridors was the home of ill-matched company: artists, poets, traders, porters. Here, in complete poverty on the verge of poverty and indescribable artistic mess, Picasso regularly made paintings of his Fernande and was searching for his way.
The popular "Girl on a Ball" (1905) is attributed to transitional paintings between "Blue" and "Rose" periods. The artist plays on the contrast and balance of forms or lines, gravity and lightness, stability - instability. Also, at the end of "Rose Period", antique paintings appeared - "Boy Leading a Horse" (1906), "Young Girl with a Goat" (1906) and others.
Picasso’s "African" Period (1907 - 1909):
In 1906, Picasso worked on the portrait of Gertrude Stein. He repainted the painting about eighty times and according to the reminiscences of Gertrude Stein herself, Picasso finally told her in rage: "I have stopped seeing you when I look at you" and stopped working on the portrait. This was a turning point in his creative work and since then he stopped painting images of specific people and shifted to painting the image of person as such and form as an independent structure. Picasso needed confirmation of his path in the overall development of art world and new experiences for acquisition of new creative energy and the opening of a whole stratum of African culture by science at that time served as an impetus for the artist. He was particularly interested in African sculpture and masks, he thought they were endowed with magical powers and found sensuous simplicity of forms in them. Most likely, these "African influences" determined the final variant of a portrait.
The famous "Avignon Girl" paintings appeared in 1907. The artist worked for over a year on these paintings - for a long time and carefully, as he has not worked before on his other paintings. The first reaction of the public was shock. Matisse was furious. Even most of his friends disapproved of these works. "I have the feeling that you wanted to feed us with tow or drink gasoline", - said artist Georges Braque, Picasso's new friend. The scandalous painting, whose title was given by the poet A. Salmon, was the first step towards Cubism and many critics consider it as a starting point for contemporary art. |
This Saturday artistic world is celebrating the 127th birthday of Pablo Picasso - one of the leading artists in history - most famous for co-founding the Cubist movement. Picasso was a big fan of distortion of reality when it came to portraits. He was often told by people whose portraits he painted that they showed little resemblance to the original. Picasso would always reply "Just wait, in 10 years there will be more resemblance".
