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Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) was one of the recognized masters of 20th century art, probably most famous as the founder, along with Georges Braque, of Cubism. Introduction While Picasso was primarily a painter (in fact he believed that an artist must paint in order to be considered a true artist), he also worked with small ceramic and bronze sculptures, collage and even produced some poetry. "Je suis aussi un poète," as he quipped to his friends. Picasso was the most prolific painter ever, as deemed in the Guiness Book of Records. He produced about 13,500 paintings or designs, 100,000 prints or engravings, 34,000 book illustrations, and 300 sculptures and ceramics plus drawings and tapestries. The total value of his work was estimated in 1973 to be about $750 million. Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica, Spain: Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. The act of painting it was captured in a series of photographs by Picasso's most famous lover, Dora Maar, a distinguished artist in her own right. Guernica hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art for many years; Picasso stipulated that the painting should not return to Spain until democracy was restored in that country. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting became one of the main attractions in Madrid's Reina Sofía Museum when it opened. Picasso was extremely talented as a painter and draughtsman, even by the standards of the world's great artists. He worked with equal facility in oil, watercolour, pastels, charcoal, pencil, and ink. He famously rendered complex scenes as just a few geometric shapes in his mixed-media Cubist works, but he also produced masterful realist portraits throughout his life. His pen and ink sketches of his friends from the Cubist era and afterwards are valued for their understated intimacy, examples of the fluidity of his skills. Indeed, Picasso moved with ease among the plastic arts despite limited academic training (he finished only one year at the Royal Academy in Madrid). His natural talents were augmented by a ferocious work ethic that survived into the final years of his long life. Periods Blue Period (1901-1904) - sombre paintings which are influenced
from a trip in Spain, his sad mood in many of the pictures possibly
coming from his reaction to the death of a friend. Picasso's father, José Ruiz y Blasco, was himself a painter; for most of his life, a professor of art at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts; and was a curator of a local museum. It was from his father that Picasso learned the basics of formal academic art training – figure drawing, and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art schools throughout his childhood, often those where his father taught, he never finished his college level course of study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, leaving after less than a year. The Picasso Museum in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona days and for many years Picasso's personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as rarely seen works from his old age, that clearly demonstrate Picasso's firm grounding in classical techniques. Picasso used the harlequin in many of his early works, especially in his Blue and Rose Periods. A comedic character depicted usually in checkered patterned clothing, the harlequin became a personal symbol of Picasso. During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a motif which he used often in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly because of contact with the Surrealists who often used it as their symbol. The minotaur appears in Picasso's painting Guernica. Picasso and pacifism As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either world war. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Franco and the Fascists through his art he did not take up arms against them. He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. No political movement seemed to compel his support to any great degree. During the Second World War, Picasso lived in German occupied Paris. The Nazis hated his style of painting, so he was not able to show his works during this time. He retreated into his studio, continuing to paint nevertheless. While the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso was still able to continue because of the French resistance who would smuggle bronze to him. After the Second World War, Picasso rejoined the French Communist Party, and even attended an international peace conference in Poland. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. Personal life In the early years of the 20th century, Picasso, still a struggling youth, began a long term relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is she who appears in many of the Rose period paintings. After garnering fame and some fortune, Picasso left Fernande for Marcelle Humbert, whom Picasso called Eva. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Eva was diagnosed with cancer and during her rapid deterioration, Picasso administered to her every need, making daily trips across Paris to visit her in the hospital. Nu couché aux fleurs (1932)In 1918, Picasso married Olga Khoklova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome. Olga introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Olga's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. In 1927 Picasso met 17 year old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Olga soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce and Picasso did not want Olga to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Olga's death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie Thérèse and fathered a daughter, Maya, with her. Marie Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her and eventually hanged herself after Picasso's death. The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 30s and early 40s and it was Dora who documented the painting of Guernica. Like all the women in his life, Dora was cruelly emotionally abused by the narcissistic Picasso. After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude, and Paloma. Uniquely among Picasso's women, Françoise eventually left Picasso in 1953 because of his abusive treatment and infidelities. This came as a severe blow to Picasso. He went through a difficult period after Françoise's departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that he was an old man, now in his seventies, who was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her. Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. Jacqueline worked at the Madoura Pottery, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picasso's life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Françoise. Françoise had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picasso's encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children's rights. Picasso then secretly married Jacqueline after Françoise had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him. In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteau's "Testament of Orpheus". Picasso always played himself in his film appearances. For a list of quotations by Pablo Picasso, see Pablo Picasso/Quotations Later works Picasso had accumulated a huge fortune and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. The media would give him much attention, though they were often more interested in his personal life than his art. He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge 50 foot high sculpture to be built in Chicago, Illinois, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and became somewhat controversial. What the figure is exactly is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks of downtown Chicago was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of Chicago. In his 80s and 90s, Picasso, no longer quite the energetic dynamo he had been in his youth, became more and more impotent. To a man for whom this was such an important part of life, this was a serious life change and Picasso seems to have dealt with it by redoubling his already prolific artistic output. Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, his styles and periods changing right until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate engravings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. One long time admirer, Douglas Cooper, called them "the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man". Only later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as usual, ahead of his time. Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973, and was interred at Castle Vauvenargues' park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône. Jacqueline prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. His final words were "drink to me". At the time of his death, he had kept off the art market that which he had not needed to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties, or estate tax to the French state, were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.
The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes
that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the
world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even
draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend
to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces
can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from
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