FREE ESSAY ON PABLO PICASSO AND HIS ARTISTIC LIFE

PABLO PICASSO AND HIS ARTISTIC LIFE

Pablo picasso
And his Artistic Life 
A report by
terra hardman
Introduction
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor, generally considered the greatest
artist of the 20th century. He was unique as an inventor of forms, as an innovator of
styles and techniques, as a master of various media, and as one of the most prolific
artists in history. He created more than 20,000 works. Picasso's genius manifested itself
early: at the age of 10 he made his first paintings, and at 15 he performed brilliantly
on the entrance examinations to Barcelona's School of Fine Arts.
Family life
Born in Malaga on October 25, 1881, Picasso was the son of Jose Ruiz Blasco, an art
teacher, and Maria Picasso y Lopez. Until 1898 he always used his father's name, Ruiz,
and his mother's maiden name, Picasso, to sign his pictures. After about 1901 he dropped
Ruiz and used his mother's maiden name to sign his pictures. His large academic canvas
Science and Charity, depicting a doctor, a nun, and a child at a sick woman's bedside,
won a gold medal.
Blue Period 
Between 1900 and 1902, Picasso made three trips to Paris, finally settling there in 1904.
He found the city's bohemian street life fascinating, and his pictures of people in dance
halls and cafes show how he assimilated the postimpressionism of Paul Gauguin and the
symbolist painters called the Nabis. The themes of Edgar Degas and Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as the style of the latter, exerted the strongest influence.
Picasso's Blue Room reflects the work of both these painters and, at the same time, shows
his evolution toward the Blue Period, so called because various shades of blue dominated
his work for the next few years. Expressing human misery, the paintings portray blind
figures, beggars, alcoholics, and prostitutes, their somewhat elongated bodies
reminiscent of works by the Spanish artist El Greco.
Rose Period 
in Paris, Picasso met Fernande Shortly after settling Olivier, the first of many
companions to influence the theme, style, and mood of his work. With this happy
relationship, Picasso changed his palette to pinks and reds; the years 1904 and 1905 are
thus called the Rose Period. Many of his subjects were drawn from the circus, which he
visited several times a week; one such painting is Family of Saltimbanques. In the figure
of the harlequin, Picasso represented his alter ego, a practice he repeated in later
works as well. Dating from his first decade in Paris are friendships with the poet Max
Jacob, the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, the art dealers Ambroise Vollard and Daniel
Henry Kahnweiler, and the American expatriate writers Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo,
who were his first important patrons; Picasso did portraits of them all.
Protocubism 
In the summer of 1906, during Picasso's stay in Gosol, Spain, his work entered a new
phase, marked by the influence of Greek, Iberian, and African art. His celebrated
portrait of Gertrude Stein reveals a masklike treatment of her face. The key work of this
early period, however, is Les demoiselles d'Avignon, so radical in style—its
picture surface resembling fractured glass—that it was not even understood by
contemporary avant-garde painters and critics. Destroyed were spatial depth and the ideal
form of the female nude, which Picasso restructured into harsh, angular planes. 
Cubism—Analytic and Synthetic 
Inspired by the volumetric treatment of form by the French postimpressionist artist Paul
Cezanne, Picasso and the French artist Georges Braque painted landscapes in 1908 in a
style later described by a critic as being made of "little cubes," thus leading to the
term cubism. Some of their paintings are so similar that it is difficult to tell them
apart. Working together between 1908 and 1911, they were concerned with breaking down and
analyzing form, and together they developed the first phase of cubism, known as analytic
cubism. Monochromatic color schemes were favored in their depictions of radically
fragmented motifs, whose several sides were shown simultaneously. Picasso's favorite
subjects were musical instruments, still-life objects, and his friends. In 1912, pasting
paper and a piece of oilcloth to the canvas and combining these with painted areas,
Picasso created his first collage, Still Life with Chair Caning. This technique marked a
transition to synthetic cubism. This second phase of cubism is more decorative, and color
plays a major role, although shapes remain fragmented and flat. Picasso was to practice
synthetic cubism throughout his career, but by no means exclusively. 
Cubist Sculpture 
Picasso created cubist sculptures as well as paintings. He also made
constructions—such as Mandolin and Clarinet from odds and ends of wood, metal,
paper, and nonartistic materials, in which he explored the spatial hypotheses of cubist
painting. His Glass of Absinthe, combining a silver sugar strainer with a painted bronze
sculpture, anticipates his much later "found object" creations, such as Baboon and Young,
as well as pop art objects of the 1960s. 
Realist and Surrealist Works 
During World War I (1914-1918), Picasso went to Rome, working as a designer with Sergey
Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. He met and married the dancer Olga Koklova. In a
realist style, Picasso made several portraits of her around 1917, of their son, and of
numerous friends. In the early 1920s he did tranquil, neoclassical pictures of heavy,
sculpturesque figures, an example being Three Women at the Spring, and works inspired by
mythology, such as The Pipes of Pan. At the same time, Picasso also created strange
pictures of small-headed bathers and violent convulsive portraits of women which are
often taken to indicate the tension he experienced in his marriage. Although he stated he
was not a surrealist, many of his pictures have a surreal and disturbing quality, as in
Sleeping Woman in Armchair and Seated Bather. 
Paintings of the Early 1930s 
Several cubist paintings of the early 1930s, stressing harmonious, curvilinear lines and
expressing an underlying eroticism, reflect Picasso's pleasure with his newest love,
Marie Therese Walter, who gave birth to their daughter Maia in 1935. Marie Therese,
frequently portrayed sleeping, also was the model for the famous Girl Before a Mirror. In
1935 Picasso made the etching Minotauromachy, a major work combining his minotaur and
bullfight themes; in it the disemboweled horse, as well as the bull, prefigure the
imagery of Guernica, a mural often called the most important single work of the 20th
century. 
Guernica
Picasso was moved to paint the huge mural Guernica shortly after German planes, acting on
orders from Spain's authoritarian leader Francisco Franco, bombarded the Basque town of
Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Completed in less than two
months, Guernica was hung in the Spanish Pavilion of the Paris International Exposition
of 1937. The painting does not portray the event; rather, Picasso expressed his outrage
by employing such imagery as the bull, the dying horse, a fallen warrior, a mother and
dead child, a woman trapped in a burning building, another rushing into the scene, and a
figure leaning from a window and holding out a lamp. Despite the complexity of its
symbolism, and the impossibility of definitive interpretation, Guernica makes an
overwhelming impact in its portrayal of the horrors of war. 
World War II and After 
Picasso's palette grew somber with the onset of World War II (1939-1945), and death is
the subject of numerous works, such as Still Life with Steer's Skull and The Charnel
House. He formed a new liaison during the 1940s with the painter Fran?oise Gilot who bore
him two children, Claude and Paloma; they appear in many works that recapitulate his
earlier styles. The last of Picasso's companions to be portrayed was Jacqueline Roque,
whom he met in 1953 and married in 1961. He then spent much of his time in southern
France. 
Late Works: Recapitulation
Many of Picasso's later pictures were based on works by great masters of the
past—Diego Velazquez, Gustave Courbet, Eugene Delacroix, and Edouard Manet. In
addition to painting, Picasso worked in various media, making hundreds of lithographs in
the renowned Paris graphics workshop, Atelier Mourlot. Ceramics also engaged his
interest, and in 1947, in Vallauris, he produced nearly 2000 pieces. 
summary 
Throughout Picasso's lifetime, his work was exhibited on countless occasions. Most
unusual, however, was the 1971 exhibition at the Louvre, in Paris, honoring him on his
90th birthday; until then, living artists had not been shown there. In 1980 a major
retrospective showing of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Picasso died in his villa Notre-Dame-de-Vie near Mougins on April 8, 1973. 
Bibliography
Pablo picasso
And his Artistic Life 
A report by
terra hardman
Introduction
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor, generally considered the greatest
artist of the 20th century. He was unique as an inventor of forms, as an innovator of
styles and techniques, as a master of various media, and as one of the most prolific
artists in history. He created more than 20,000 works. Picasso's genius manifested itself
early: at the age of 10 he made his first paintings, and at 15 he performed brilliantly
on the entrance examinations to Barcelona's School of Fine Arts.
Family life
Born in Malaga on October 25, 1881, Picasso was the son of Jose Ruiz Blasco, an art
teacher, and Maria Picasso y Lopez. Until 1898 he always used his father's name, Ruiz,
and his mother's maiden name, Picasso, to sign his pictures. After about 1901 he dropped
Ruiz and used his mother's maiden name to sign his pictures. His large academic canvas
Science and Charity, depicting a doctor, a nun, and a child at a sick woman's bedside,
won a gold medal.
Blue Period 
Between 1900 and 1902, Picasso made three trips to Paris, finally settling there in 1904.
He found the city's bohemian street life fascinating, and his pictures of people in dance
halls and cafes show how he assimilated the postimpressionism of Paul Gauguin and the
symbolist painters called the Nabis. The themes of Edgar Degas and Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as the style of the latter, exerted the strongest influence.
Picasso's Blue Room reflects the work of both these painters and, at the same time, shows
his evolution toward the Blue Period, so called because various shades of blue dominated
his work for the next few years. Expressing human misery, the paintings portray blind
figures, beggars, alcoholics, and prostitutes, their somewhat elongated bodies
reminiscent of works by the Spanish artist El Greco.
Rose Period 
in Paris, Picasso met Fernande Shortly after settling Olivier, the first of many
companions to influence the theme, style, and mood of his work. With this happy
relationship, Picasso changed his palette to pinks and reds; the years 1904 and 1905 are
thus called the Rose Period. Many of his subjects were drawn from the circus, which he
visited several times a week; one such painting is Family of Saltimbanques. In the figure
of the harlequin, Picasso represented his alter ego, a practice he repeated in later
works as well. Dating from his first decade in Paris are friendships with the poet Max
Jacob, the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, the art dealers Ambroise Vollard and Daniel
Henry Kahnweiler, and the American expatriate writers Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo,
who were his first important patrons; Picasso did portraits of them all.
Protocubism 
In the summer of 1906, during Picasso's stay in Gosol, Spain, his work entered a new
phase, marked by the influence of Greek, Iberian, and African art. His celebrated
portrait of Gertrude Stein reveals a masklike treatment of her face. The key work of this
early period, however, is Les demoiselles d'Avignon, so radical in style—its
picture surface resembling fractured glass—that it was not even understood by
contemporary avant-garde painters and critics. Destroyed were spatial depth and the ideal
form of the female nude, which Picasso restructured into harsh, angular planes. 
Cubism—Analytic and Synthetic 
Inspired by the volumetric treatment of form by the French postimpressionist artist Paul
Cezanne, Picasso and the French artist Georges Braque painted landscapes in 1908 in a
style later described by a critic as being made of "little cubes," thus leading to the
term cubism. Some of their paintings are so similar that it is difficult to tell them
apart. Working together between 1908 and 1911, they were concerned with breaking down and
analyzing form, and together they developed the first phase of cubism, known as analytic
cubism. Monochromatic color schemes were favored in their depictions of radically
fragmented motifs, whose several sides were shown simultaneously. Picasso's favorite
subjects were musical instruments, still-life objects, and his friends. In 1912, pasting
paper and a piece of oilcloth to the canvas and combining these with painted areas,
Picasso created his first collage, Still Life with Chair Caning. This technique marked a
transition to synthetic cubism. This second phase of cubism is more decorative, and color
plays a major role, although shapes remain fragmented and flat. Picasso was to practice
synthetic cubism throughout his career, but by no means exclusively. 
Cubist Sculpture 
Picasso created cubist sculptures as well as paintings. He also made
constructions—such as Mandolin and Clarinet from odds and ends of wood, metal,
paper, and nonartistic materials, in which he explored the spatial hypotheses of cubist
painting. His Glass of Absinthe, combining a silver sugar strainer with a painted bronze
sculpture, anticipates his much later "found object" creations, such as Baboon and Young,
as well as pop art objects of the 1960s. 
Realist and Surrealist Works 
During World War I (1914-1918), Picasso went to Rome, working as a designer with Sergey
Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. He met and married the dancer Olga Koklova. In a
realist style, Picasso made several portraits of her around 1917, of their son, and of
numerous friends. In the early 1920s he did tranquil, neoclassical pictures of heavy,
sculpturesque figures, an example being Three Women at the Spring, and works inspired by
mythology, such as The Pipes of Pan. At the same time, Picasso also created strange
pictures of small-headed bathers and violent convulsive portraits of women which are
often taken to indicate the tension he experienced in his marriage. Although he stated he
was not a surrealist, many of his pictures have a surreal and disturbing quality, as in
Sleeping Woman in Armchair and Seated Bather. 
Paintings of the Early 1930s 
Several cubist paintings of the early 1930s, stressing harmonious, curvilinear lines and
expressing an underlying eroticism, reflect Picasso's pleasure with his newest love,
Marie Therese Walter, who gave birth to their daughter Maia in 1935. Marie Therese,
frequently portrayed sleeping, also was the model for the famous Girl Before a Mirror. In
1935 Picasso made the etching Minotauromachy, a major work combining his minotaur and
bullfight themes; in it the disemboweled horse, as well as the bull, prefigure the
imagery of Guernica, a mural often called the most important single work of the 20th
century. 
Guernica
Picasso was moved to paint the huge mural Guernica shortly after German planes, acting on
orders from Spain's authoritarian leader Francisco Franco, bombarded the Basque town of
Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Completed in less than two
months, Guernica was hung in the Spanish Pavilion of the Paris International Exposition
of 1937. The painting does not portray the event; rather, Picasso expressed his outrage
by employing such imagery as the bull, the dying horse, a fallen warrior, a mother and
dead child, a woman trapped in a burning building, another rushing into the scene, and a
figure leaning from a window and holding out a lamp. Despite the complexity of its
symbolism, and the impossibility of definitive interpretation, Guernica makes an
overwhelming impact in its portrayal of the horrors of war. 
World War II and After 
Picasso's palette grew somber with the onset of World War II (1939-1945), and death is
the subject of numerous works, such as Still Life with Steer's Skull and The Charnel
House. He formed a new liaison during the 1940s with the painter Fran?oise Gilot who bore
him two children, Claude and Paloma; they appear in many works that recapitulate his
earlier styles. The last of Picasso's companions to be portrayed was Jacqueline Roque,
whom he met in 1953 and married in 1961. He then spent much of his time in southern
France. 
Late Works: Recapitulation
Many of Picasso's later pictures were based on works by great masters of the
past—Diego Velazquez, Gustave Courbet, Eugene Delacroix, and Edouard Manet. In
addition to painting, Picasso worked in various media, making hundreds of lithographs in
the renowned Paris graphics workshop, Atelier Mourlot. Ceramics also engaged his
interest, and in 1947, in Vallauris, he produced nearly 2000 pieces. 
summary 
Throughout Picasso's lifetime, his work was exhibited on countless occasions. Most
unusual, however, was the 1971 exhibition at the Louvre, in Paris, honoring him on his
90th birthday; until then, living artists had not been shown there. In 1980 a major
retrospective showing of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Picasso died in his villa Notre-Dame-de-Vie near Mougins on April 8, 1973.