In terms of output and impact on Western art, the Spanish painter, sculptor, and graphic designer Pablo Picasso stands among the highest. To put it simply, he laid the groundwork for abstract painting as the driving force behind the development of cubism (a style in which familiar objects are fragmented to display all aspects of an object at once) (art having little or no pictorial representation).
Biography
Spanish artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Malaga. He had two sisters, Lola and Concepción, although he was the oldest and only boy in the family. Joseph Ruiz Blasco Sr. taught at the School of Arts and Crafts, where his son now studies. Maria Ruiz Picasso was Pablo’s mother (the artist used her surname from about 1901 on). The legend is that Picasso started drawing before he could even talk. One of his first paintings included a scene from a bullfight, which may have been influenced by the fact that he attended many of them with his father when he was a boy.
When Picasso was fourteen years old, his family relocated to La Corua, Spain, where he enrolled in the School of Fine Art. His father was a professor, and he learned a lot and grew as an artist thanks to his tutelage.
Upon his family’s relocation to Barcelona, Spain in 1896, Picasso had little trouble getting accepted to the School of Fine Arts. A year later, he entered the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, Spain, on the advanced student roster. His exceptional skill was on full display as he finished an entrance exam in one day despite being given a full month to complete it.
After a short time, Picasso found the academy environment too confining and moved back to Barcelona, where he began to independently research the art of the past and present. Picasso rapidly became a part of the group of poets, painters, and authors who frequented the famous café Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, which at the time was the most important cultural hub in all of Spain (The Four Cats). During the years 1900-1903, Picasso split his time between Paris and Barcelona. In 1901, he held his first solo show in Paris.
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Paris at The Turn of The Twentieth Century
Paris was the cultural epicenter of the globe at the turn of the twentieth century. It was the area where the impressionist school of painting began, which described the appearance of objects through dabs or strokes of unmixed hues to achieve the look of true reflected light. While there were still recognizable elements of the real world in their paintings, there was also a clear tendency toward flatness and abstraction.
In 1904, Picasso established a long-term studio in the heart of Paris. Artists, authors, and patrons of the city’s cutting edge began to frequent his studio.
A creative pattern can be seen in Picasso’s early works that would persist throughout his prolific career. Between the years 1900 and 1906, he experimented with virtually every significant current in modern (contemporary) painting. It was in this way that his own work underwent a radical transformation.
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Blue and Pink Periods
Picasso’s Blue Period lasted from 1901 through 1904. The figures in almost all of his works were thin, sad, and contemplative, and they were rendered in dark blue. The Old Guitarist (1903) and Life (1904) are two excellent works from this time (1903).
At the midway point of that year, Picasso’s style shifted significantly. The range of color in these paintings narrowed down to natural, delicate, and soft hues like pink and red. This time in his life came to be known as his “Pink Phase.” In this epoch, the Family of Saltimbanques is the most well-known representative (1905).
Between the years 1900 and 1905, the majority of Picasso’s paintings were very two-dimensional and flat. In contrast, towards the end of 1905, he showed a growing fascination with graphic volumes. This fascination appears to have been stimulated by Paul Cézanne’s latter works (1839–1906).
The mask-like abstraction of the face in Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906) was influenced by an exhibit of Iberian sculpture that the artist had visited at the Louvre in Paris in the spring of 1906. In one of the most groundbreaking works of art in Picasso’s whole career, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was completed a year later, this inspiration achieved its zenith (1907).
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Collages and Further Development
Around 1911, Picasso and Georges Braque (1882-1963) began incorporating letters and newspaper clippings into their cubist paintings, giving rise to a new art form known as the cubist collage. Still, Life with Chair Caning was Picasso’s first and most famous collage (1911–1912).
Picasso returned to painting with greater intensity after dabbling in the then-novel medium of collage. The planes of his Three Musicians (1921) are much larger, simpler, and brighter. The Three Musicians is a classical example of cubism due to the depth of emotion and harmony between the formal aspects.
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Additional Achievements
During his lengthy career, Picasso also contributed significantly to the fields of sculpture and prints. On occasion, he dabbled in ceramics, and he regularly created the theatrical stage and curtain designs.
Picasso’s innovation in painting cannot be reduced to the evolution of Cubism. In the years about 1915 and again in the early 1920s, he abandoned abstraction in favor of a more traditional, classical, and tranquil aesthetic in his drawings and paintings. The Woman in White is one of these works that has gained widespread recognition (1923). The ease with which Picasso could express himself visually is on full display in this masterwork, painted just two years after the Three Musicians.
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