(1881-1973)

Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain. He adopted his mother’s maiden name, Maria Picasso Lopez; his father, José Ruiz Blasco, was also an artist.

After studying art in Madrid, he made his first trip to Paris in 1900, the art capital of Europe. In Paris, he lived with Max Jacob (journalist and poet), who helped him learn French. Max slept at night and Picasso slept during the day as he worked at night. They were times of severe poverty, cold and desperation. Much of his work had to be burned to keep the small room warm. In 1901, with Soler, his friend, he founded the magazine, Arte  Joven, in Madrid. The first edition was entirely illustrated by him. From that day, Picasso started to simply sign his work, Picasso, whilst before he signed, Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.

Pablo’s work is frequently marked by a series of periods of transition.

The Blue Period occurred between 1901 and 1904. During this phase, the artist portrayed unhappy people in tones of blue, evoking feelings of sadness and alienation. "It was thinking of Casagemas that I started painting in blue,” he said. The suicide of his friend instigated him into exploring human misery and desperation. Those were his thoughts on matters of life, love and death. They are paintings with a sombre backdrop and a great abyss of pain.

On the 12th of April 1904, Picasso left Barcelona in what would be his forth and last trip. He settled in number 13 Rue Ravignan, Montmartre, in a sordid wooden building, known as Bateau-Lavoir, which was later burned down in a fire in 1970. It is there, on a stormy day of August 1904, that he met Fernande Olivier.

Soon after they met, the Spaniard began his new period. Fernande Olivier was the first of many affairs that served as inspiration for his art. This particular love affair produced much sensual and erotic work. Friendship and curiosity took him to the Médrano circus three or four times a week. He felt good there, surrounded by Spanish or Catalan artists.

Picasso created a number of portraits of Fernande in various media throughout their relationship, including a woodcut dated to 1905-6, another woodcut of the same year as the Oberlin sculpture, and a 1906 gouache of a nude Fernande reclining. A later bronze head of Fernande was one of Picasso's few Cubist sculptures and represents a radical departure from his earlier sculptural work.

In the Pink Period, an abundance of pink and red tones invade the canvas; a period that was characterized by acrobats, dancers, harlequins, and circus performers: the circus world.

In that autumn, he met Gertrude Stein, a meeting that proved to be decisive. In the spring of 1903, Leo Stein, a young American that was discovering his vocation as a painter, settled in Paris, in Rue de Fleurus, 27, soon to be accompanied by his sister, Gertrude, who would become a great writer. With their considerable fortune, they bought work by Matisse (collections of Michael, another brother, and Leo), from 1904 and, in 1905, work by Picasso (collection of Leo and Gertrude). The Steins soon started to frequent the Bateau-Lavoir atelier, where Picasso and other artists lived. They became his friends and bought more of this work, allowing Picasso to live in a relatively calm financial situation from then on, something that was new to him. Getrude organized parties every Saturday and was permanently surrounded by painters and writers.

On one of these visits to Gertrude’s house, Picasso saw a small Congolese sculpture that Matisse had acquired in an exotic bric-a-brac shop. They say Picasso was especially impressed with the sculpture’s empty eyes.

In 1906, Picasso met Henri Matisse through Gertrude and, from then on, the renowned artist became his best friend. For the next decades, Picasso competed with Matisse and would try to impress him. Because of this friendship,  his work entered a new period marked by the influence of Greek, Iberian and African art, which was Protocubism, the antecedent of Cubism.

The famous portrait of Gertrude Stein (1905-1906 ) reveals the treatment of the face in the form of a mask.

Before this revolution, the portrait of Gertrude Stein already merged two poles: Cézanne and Black African sculpture.

To reach this new style of art, Gertrude had to pose 96 times. Unsatisfied, Picasso abandoned the work momentarily. He left for Gosol, a small town in the Pyrenees of Catalonia, in the search of more inspiration. Back in Paris, Picasso continued with the portrait, erased the face and transformed it forever, taking a new path in his art.

In 1907, he painted Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, inspired in the Iberian and African sculptures. The painting of prostitutes in a brothel revolutionized the art world. With it, he broke the space and form of the ideal representation of the female nude, now structured through lines and cutting planes and angles.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

In the same year, Picasso and Braque are introduced and started painting together, developing the first stage of Cubism.

Cubism originated in the work of Cézanne. For him, paintings should treat the forms of nature as if they were cones, spheres and cylinders. The cubists, however, went further than Cézanne. They represented objects in all their faces in a single plane. It was as if the object had been opened in all its sides at the same time, in the same frontal plane in relation to the observer. This attitude broke down the objects and showed a new vision of reality. 

   Still Life with Plaster Cupid. 1895         Trois Baigneuses  1879-82

Two paintings by Paul Cezanne.

(1839-1906)

The cubist painters try to represent objects in three dimensions on a flat surface, using geometrical shapes with a predominance of straight lines. In fact, he does not represent but suggests the structure of two bodies or objects. He represents them as if one moved around them, seeing all the visual angles, from the top and bottom, perceiving all the planes and volumes.

The term Cubism is born from the words of an art critic for whom the landscapes painted by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque seemed to be composed of “small cubes”.

Cubism put an end to perspective, a resource used for six centuries before then, that had provided the illusion of depth in art. A new reality emerged under the eye of Cubism.

In 1911, he met another of the important women in his life, Marcelle Humbert. He had just separated from Fernande Olivier with whom he lived at that time. Picasso called Marcelle “Eva” to show she was his first love. Marcelle was also his model in some paintings but suddenly died in 1917.

In 1918, Picasso married Olga Koklova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome.Olga had a son named Paulo. The artist painted Olga and their son many times but, in 1935, they divorced. Curiously, as time passed, he started portraying Olga as a terrible beast.

At the start of the 1930’s, he met Marie Thérèse Walter, a new muse for his work and with whom he had a daughter, Maia (1935). 

Although he was still with Marie, Picasso met Dora Maar in 1936, another of his lovers portrayed in his paintings. It was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.

In 1937, Picasso created his masterpiece, Guernica, a Spanish city bombarded by the Nazis. This attack served as a support signal to the Spanish general Francisco Franco, who fought against the Spanish Republic.

Guernica      click on the image to enlarge

In this painting, Picasso portrays the most real horrors of war. An image of such form and impact that it invades us with a crushing emotional charge.

At the top, the canvas is dominated by the light of a lamp-eye, the blink of a moment of terror. In the centre, a terrified horse, galloping, represents the forces of destruction.  A deformed hand holds an oil lamp, common in country houses. On it’s right, the profile of a petrified bull, symbol of Spain’s civil war, feeling all the impotence when faced with destruction. Under the bull, we see a mother and a dead child on her lap. She pleads for a spark of life for her just-born child. It is Picasso’s pieta. A masculine figure spreads out at the bottom of the painting. Although quartered, he still holds a broken sword. Alongside the sword is a flower. On the right, a woman with bare breasts, turned to the light, begs for the end of torment while another, incinerated, lifts her arms to the emptiness that is void of hope... A house ablaze. The horror in the painting pitilessly scorches the last traces of life.

Picasso was forbidden to expose his work publicly during the entire period of German rule. On a huge canvas, Guernica was once studied by a general, who asked Picasso,  “Was it you who did this?” His reply was razor sharp, “No! It was you who did this.”

Although he represented the evils of armed conflict in Guernica and was a declared opposer of General Franco, Picasso stayed in occupied Paris during the Second World War. He joined a communist party and, when the war ended, went to Moscow to show his support  for Stalin.

Picasso’s personal life underwent some turmoil during the 1940’s when he met the artist Françoise Gilot. He had two children with her, Claude and Paloma, and she was the only woman that he did not distort in his paintings. On the contrary, when the relationship ended in 53, he disfigured his own image.

A short time later, in 1955, he met Jacqueline Roque.

In 1961, Picasso married Jacqueline and they went to live in Notre Dame de Vie, in Mougins, the last home of the great painter.

CONCLUSION

Throughout the years, Pablo Picasso ventured into different styles. He revolutionized sculpture, using every day objects as raw material. In his paintings, he experimented with different forms and colours, different stages and movements in art, covering the entire 20^th century. Furthermore, he never confined himself to one movement and invented new ones, like surrealism.

He worked with sculpture, ceramic, paint and in graphic arts, and continued to explore his talent until his death in 1973. 

Picasso passed away in his home, in Notre-Dame-de-Vie, France, on the 8^th of April, at the age of 91.

 Reality of form is not portrayed as it appears but as we interpret it. The world needs new windows to see truth and more eyes like those of Picasso.

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