| Picasso Pablo (1881-1973) was French painter and by birth, a Spaniard. In 1900s ("Blue" and "Rose" periods), he created sharp and expressive paintings, devoted to destitute people ("Girl on a Ball", 1905). Since 1907, Picasso was the founder of Cubism and from mid 1910s, he created paintings in the spirit of neo-classism, a number of works, which are close to surrealism. Sometimes, works of Picasso were full of pain and protest, have great social importance ("Guernica", 1937), deep humanistic content (figure "Peace Dove", 1947). Picasso worked a lot as graphic artist, sculptor and ceramist. Picasso was honored with International Lenin Prize (1962) and International Peace Prize (1950).
Biography of Pablo Picasso:
Study years:
Picasso studied under his father, Jose Ruiz, in schools of Fine Arts in A Coruna, Barcelona and in Madrid's Royal Academy of San Fernando, carried away by French art, familiar with reproductions. Picasso was influenced by anarchism. In 1900, for the first time, Picasso went to Paris and since 1904, he started living there. Since 1901, Picasso exhibited his works in galleries of "Aunt Berthe Weill" and A. Vollard. During this period, Picasso comes out from the influence of Art Nouveau, which was long preserved in the manner to emphasize the silhouettes also in color monochrome. Picasso selects Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec as his "teachers". Picasso started painting in vivid pastose strokes in the protophovism manner.
Cubism:
In 1907, Picasso created the composition "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (Museum of Modern Arts, New York) - large painting, characters of which were the visitors and girls from brothel house in Avignon block of Barcelona (poet A. Salmon, who gave the name to the painting assumed so) - asexual creatures and some fearsome idols appear before. Different stylistic manners were combined in the paintings: geometrization of rose figures of characters , some images of them were painted in stroked manner, imitating the techniques of African sculptors. "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" created sensation and the painting became the foundation for beginning of many experiments. Taste towards sharp, destructive deformation appeared to be the sign of new century. In 1908-09, Picasso along with G. Braque, influencing each other, developed new style - Cubism, which became a radical turn from quests for artistic equivalent of reality to its complete recreation. Neutral, predominantly ochreous, gray, brown and green shades, characteristic for painting by Cezanne, but noticeable "weighted", turbid were used; they are combined in geometric formulae, revealing some original "prototypes" of human figures, objects and world of nature ("Queen Isabeau" "Lady with a Fan", both belonging to the year 1909; "Portrait of A. Vollard", 1910, all are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; "Dryad," "La Fermiere", "Three Women", series of still lives, 1909-10, Hermitage). Subsequently, first phase of cubism was called "Analytic". Since 1919, it slowly waned and "synthetic" stage appeared in 1913, for which large color forms, tendency towards two-dimensional interpretation of objects were characteristic. Still-lives, predominantly with musical instruments, pipes and boxes for tobacco, notes, wine bottles etc - attributes, inherent in lifestyle of artistic bohemians in the beginning of century, start dominating. "Cubistic Cryptography" appeared in the compositions: encrypted phone numbers, house numbers, fragments of lovers names, names of streets, pubs. Picasso used collage - pasting advertisements, labels, newspaper clippings on canvas; amount of foreign material in painting increased with time (sand powdering, incorporating pieces of wood and metal, broken glass chips, use of gypsum etc). Tendency towards harmonization of colors, balanced compositions, which sometimes are fit into an oval, was observed during the "Synthetic" period. Further, liking for cubism becomes null, however, its isolated features continue to remain in painting till the end of life of artist ("Three Musicians", 1921, Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Picasso’s final years (end of 1960 - 1973):
In later works, Picasso often referred to female portraits (portraits of Jacqueline Roque). Jacqueline remained to be the last and faithful woman of Picasso, who cared for him, already ill, blind with poor hearing, until his death. Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 92, a multimillionaire, in Mougins in France and was buried near the Chateau of Vauvenargues, which belonged to him. He left more than 80000 works (according to other sources, about 20000). On the death, Picasso himself said: "I keep thinking about death. She is just a woman, who will never leave me". In 1970, Picasso Museum was opened in Barcelona (Picasso handed over paintings to museum) while the artist was still alive and in 1985, by the efforts of heirs - Picasso Museum was opened in Paris, containing more than 200 paintings, sculptures and more than 150000 pictures, collages, plates & documents.
In a cardinal manner, the creativity of Picasso had influence on the development of art and culture in entire 20th century. Still, new little-known works of celebrated artists from his huge legacy are being searched and exhibited on the auctions worldwide. |
This Sunday artistic world is celebrating the 128th 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".
