Pablo
Picasso
Pablo Picasso was undoubtedly the most influential artist of the 20th century. His name is well known to everyone, and he can be found in the art circle, the fashion circle, and the political circle. He painted in a variety of styles, founding Cubism with George Braque, inventing collage, and contributing to Surrealism. October 25, 2021 marks the 140th anniversary of Picasso's birth, and Olive Literature takes you back to the creative career of this "modern art icon".
prodigy
Born in Málaga, Spain, in 1881, the first word that popped out of his mouth was not "mom" or "dad," but "piz," the Spanish abbreviation for lápiz (pencil). Picasso's father, José Ruiz y Blasco, was a painter and teacher of Picasso's artistic initiation.
The Matador, Picador, 1889
Picasso completed his first work " Matador " At the age of 9 , he was admitted to the Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 13. The father was amazed by the processing of his own draft, silently put down his brush, and announced that he would give up painting.
First Communion, 1896
Portrait of Aunt Pepa, 1896
Blue period
La Vie, 1903
From 1900 to 1904, Picasso traveled extensively, wandering around Madrid, Paris and Barcelona. The suicide of a close friend plunges Picasso's work from this period into a dark and melancholy gray-blue hue. The subjects of the paintings are gaunt mothers and children, street beggars, prostitutes, and the blind. Looking back on the works of this period years later, Picasso downplayed them as "worthless except sensuality."
The Old Guitarist, 1903
《汤》 The Soup, 1902-03
Pink period
The Cunning Rabbit Bar by Au Lapin Agile, 1905
In 1904, Picasso gradually emerged from the shadow of his deceased friend, and the canvas became brighter. During this period, he often depicted the actors in the circus as objects and used a large number of red and pink pigments, so it was called the "Pink Period".
Acrobats and Young Clowns Acrobate et Jeune Arlequin, 1905
Young Girl with a Flower Basket, 1905
In 1906, this portrait painted by Picasso for his main patron, Ms. Groude Stein, marked an important turning point in his artistic career. Drawing inspiration from ancient Iberian sculpture, he began to explore the transformation of the three-dimensional and the flat. Ms. Stan's face has less of a sense of volume and more of an angular sense of flatness than the previous paintings.
Portrait of Gertrude Stein. 1906
Primitive Cubism
Nu à la serviette, 1907
Like other European artists of the time, Picasso set his sights on the ancient art of other cultures for original enlightenment. He believed that the sculptures of these primitive cultures were more profound than the traditional paintings of the West could express. Based on observations of traditional African masks and ancient Iberian art, Picasso created this groundbreaking work, The Maiden of Avignon.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907
The faces of the girls in the painting are depicted in the shape of masks, adding a raw wildness to their sexually suggestive poses. The whole picture presents a broken geometric fragment form, completely abandoning the linear perspective of the Renaissance to the present day, only a complete plane.
Three Women, Trois Femmes, 1908
Most of the reaction to the work's completion was shock and disgust, but George Braque took a keen interest in it and inspired it to create the first Cubist works. The painting is thus regarded as a prototype of Cubism.
cubism
Girl with a Mandolin, 1910
The collaboration between Picasso and Braque has left a good story in the history of modern painting. Picasso describes their relationship as "grasshoppers on a rope", sometimes learning from each other, sometimes fiercely competing, and exchanging their new visions for art every day. The division, multi-angle depiction and fragmentation of the same object are the consensus reached by the two. Shape and space are key elements, so both artists confined their respective palettes to earthy shades, contrasting with the bright colors previously used by Fauvism.
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910
Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, 1911
"Cubism is not a reality that you can hold in your hand. It's more like a perfume. In front of you, behind you, on both sides of you, the scent is everywhere, but you don't know where it comes from. ”
- Picasso
Violin, 1911-12
The Poet, Le poète, 1912
Picasso himself rejected the label of "Cubism," especially when critics classified his work as "Analytic cubism" and "Synthetic cubism." He considers his work to be a continuum. But there is no doubt that his work changed considerably after 1912.
Guitar, Sheet Music and Glass, 1912
From 1912 onwards, Picasso no longer focused on the position of objects in space, but set out to experiment with the art of collage, suggesting the existence of objects by reassembling pieces of paper of different shapes and patterns. This was the stage that came to be known as "integrated Cubism". This way of alluding to objects brings more liveliness and ornamentation to the composition.
"Head" Tête, 1913
Guitare, Journal, Verre et Bouteille, 1913
Neoclassicism & Surrealism
Three Women at the Spring, 1921
After World War I, Picasso briefly changed his creative style, following the "rappel à l'ordre" trend that swept across Europe at that time, returning to the neoclassical style. Picasso's works of this period are often reminiscent of the classical masters such as Raphael, Poussin, and Ingres.
Nu assis s'essuyant le pied, 1921
Portrait d'Olga dans un fauteuil, 1918
In 1925, the surrealist poet André Breton published an article in Révolution surréaliste declaring Picasso "one of us." Although the concept of "mental automation in a pure state" defined in the Manifesto of Surrealism never appealed to Picasso, he did create new images and forms under its influence to express and release inner emotions. Surrealism rekindled Picasso's passion for primitivism, pornography and violence.
Nude in a Red Armchair, 1929
Guernica
In 1936, Picasso was commissioned by the government of the Spanish Republic to paint a painting for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1936 Paris World's Fair. The theme of the World Expo is modern technology, but Picasso presented a "Guernica" with strong political overtones, which caused a sensation in the world.
Guernica, 1937
On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Germans bombed the basque town of Guernica in northern Spain for three hours, killing 1/3 of the town's population and leveling the town to the ground. When this horrific event reached Picasso's ears, he angrily drew an indictment of fascism, which had previously shown no interest in political subjects.
Ruins of Guernica in 1937
In front of this huge oil painting that is 3.5 meters high and nearly 8 meters wide, you have nowhere to escape. Every corner of the painting is covered with death. The woman on the far left howls in her arms with a dead baby in her arms. In her lower right corner was the corpse of a warrior, still holding a broken sword in her broken hand. In the middle of the picture is a horse whose body is pierced by a spear, and on the right are three women who seem to be trapped by the fire. The black-and-white flat picture is like an emotionless news report, but through the picture, we seem to hear the cries of babies, the cries of women, the cries of horses, the swords of men, and the roaring flames of this tragedy.
Years later, after Paris was occupied by the Germans, a Nazi officer visited Picasso's studio and stood in front of a photograph of Guernica and asked Picasso, "Did you do this?" Picasso replied, "No, you did it." ”
Picasso before Guernica
old age
Picasso's works in his later years became more and more rich in style and form, including the re-creation of classic masterpieces of Poussin, Velázquez, El Greco and other masters, as well as colorful portraits painted for countless lovers around him, as well as ceramics, bronze sculptures and other forms of works.
Las Meninas, 1957
Woman with Hat, 1962
The Woman, Femme, 1955
Statue of Picasso in Chicago
Since the beginning of his career, Picasso has shown an interest in a variety of subjects and styles. His style is never static, and he can create in multiple styles at the same time. "Every creative act is first and foremost a destructive act," he said. But the change of style for Picasso was not the pursuit of some kind of unreachable artistic ideal, but a serendipitous discovery, a change of thought. He never painted according to what his eyes saw, but according to what he thought in his mind.
"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but it took a lifetime to paint like a child."