Pablo Picasso

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, a painter, sculptor, lithographer, ceramicist, and much more, was arguably one of the most prominent and influential figures in the artistic scene of the entire 20th century.
It is said that Picasso displayed a remarkable artistic talent from a young age. He began painting under the guidance of his father, Don José, who was a painter himself, and who directed him to study the works of the great masters of the past. From Malaga, the family moved to Coruña for a few years, where the young Pablo started attending classes at the local School of Fine Arts. In 1895, the family relocated once again, this time to Barcelona, a city that was bustling with a new modernist spirit at the end of the 19th century. The following year, Picasso opened his first studio in Barcelona, creating works such as L’enfant de choeur (1896), First Communion (1895-96), and Science and Charity (1897). Picasso’s artistic development continued after the move, this time independently from his family, in Madrid. Here, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of San Fernando and visited the Prado Museum, where he was captivated by the works of Velazquez, El Greco, Zurbaran, and Goya.
Meanwhile, the artist had developed a strong desire to visit Paris, which he did shortly after the 1900 Universal Exposition, where he had presented a work in the Spanish Pavilion. In Paris, the Louvre and retrospectives on Delacroix, Courbet, and Ingres were crucial to his development, as was the vibrant nightlife of cabarets. However, returning to Barcelona proved difficult to digest, and even another period in Madrid in 1901 did not seem to benefit him. The sudden suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas pushed him, between 1901 and 1904, to experience what has been called the Blue Period. Characterized by melancholic and restless paintings, this period clearly reflects the sadness and turmoil the artist was experiencing during those years. Examples of works from this period include The Two Sisters (1902), The Old Guitarist (1903), and Mother with Sick Child (1903).
Shortly after he returned to Paris. Noticed by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, he exhibited sixty-four paintings in his gallery, which were met with indifference by the public. In 1904, however, things changed: Picasso returned to Paris, and shared a new studio in Montmartre, a neighborhood he frequented regularly in the evenings with various friends and colleagues. The general atmosphere of carefreeness influenced the creation of canvases belonging to the so-called Rose Period (1904-1906): the palette changed, and so did the subjects, which this time moved between reality and fantasy, among acrobats, jugglers, and dancers, clowns and tightrope walkers.
It seems that during the summer of 1906, Picasso visited Gòsol, a small village nestled in the Pyrenees, where he encountered Iberian pre-Romanesque sculpture: an artistic mode that disregarded some elements that later became central in Western art, such as the respect of proportions or the use of perspective. Thus, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) started taking shape as well as the great era of Cubism. This artwork, now considered monumental, was received at the time with almost unanimous skepticism. The partnership with Georges Braque started at that period, along with the creation of fully cubist works such as La Femme Assise (1909), Girl with a Mandolin (1910), the Portrait of Georges Braque (1909), and that of Ambroise Vollard (1909-10). The collaboration with Braque led to the experimentation of “synthetic cubism,” characterized by a softening of the geometric forms of the early paintings, in favor of systematic use of collage and papier collé.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Picasso remained in France, escaping conscription thanks to his Spanish citizenship. During this period, he met Jean Cocteau, who invited him to collaborate on the creation of curtains, sets, and costumes for the ballet Parade, which Cocteau was working on for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1917, the two traveled to Rome, still following the show. There, Picasso encountered the Futurists, but also witnessed the immense legacy of Renaissance and classical art, as well as the Pompeiian paintings in situ. All of this led him towards a new creative period characterized by compositional balance and monumental forms, which generally embraced the first half of the 1920s and has been defined by critics as Neoclassical.
In the 1930s, despite Picasso’s art being considered as degenerate by the Nazi regime, he participated in several exhibitions: in New York, Paris, England, and Spain. The artist returned to his home country between 1934 and 1936, where he witnessed a tense atmosphere that would soon erupt into a bloody civil war, ending with the establishment of the Francoist Regime. In 1937, Picasso condemned Francisco Franco’s military uprising by publishing the pamphlet Sueños y mentiras de Franco (Dreams and Lies of Franco). That year, on the occasion of the Paris Universal Exhibition, he was commissioned to create a large work for the Spanish Pavilion representing the Second Spanish Republic. Drawing inspiration from the dramatic bombing of the city of Guernica, Picasso created arguably one of the most iconic and certainly representative works of the 20th century.
Piccasso spent also the Second World War in France, occasionally moving away from Paris. That period was one of silence for his works, as they could not be exhibited to the public. In 1945, at the end of the war, the artist moved to Antibes, where he created works like Pastorale, infused with a renewed sense of joy for life. Shortly after, he moved to Vallauris, where he began working with ceramics in Suzanne Ramié’s workshop.
In 1944, Picasso joined the French Communist Party, and in his later years, he increasingly dedicated himself to revisiting the artistic and iconographic heritage of the West. For example, he worked on Las Meninas, drawing inspiration from Velázquez’s painting of the same name, and Les Femmes d’Alger in comparison with Delacroix. He also reinterpreted works by Cranach, Poussin, Rembrandt, David, Courbet, and Manet.
Picasso’s life is probably shrouded in a mysterious aura that the artist himself, perhaps somewhat narcissistically, contributed to fuel. It is said that he swore not to return to Spain as long as Franco remained in power, and he kept his word. The regime fell in 1975, and Picasso died two years earlier in Mougins, France. About a decade earlier, the Picasso Museum was established in Barcelona, partly composed of works donated by the artist himself. Finally, forty years later, a new Picasso Museum was inaugurated in Malaga, the city where Pablo Picasso was born.

Selected bibliography

  • Berggruen O., Von Liechtenstein A. (eds.), Picasso tra cubismo e classicismo 1915-1925. Milan: Skira, 2017.
  • Le Fur Y., Parini F. (eds.), Picasso primitivo. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2017.
  • Bouvard É. (ed.), Pablo Picasso. Figure (1906-1971). Milan: Skira, 2016.
  • Gilot F., Lake C. (eds.), La mia vita con Picasso. Rome: Donzelli Editore, 2016.
  • Zervos C. (ed.), Pablo Picasso Catalogue Raisonné, 33 vols. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’Art, 1932-1978.

Selected bibliography

  • Berggruen O., Von Liechtenstein A. (eds.), Picasso tra cubismo e classicismo 1915-1925. Milan: Skira, 2017.
  • Le Fur Y., Parini F. (eds.), Picasso primitivo. Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2017.
  • Bouvard É. (ed.), Pablo Picasso. Figure (1906-1971). Milan: Skira, 2016.
  • Gilot F., Lake C. (eds.), La mia vita con Picasso. Rome: Donzelli Editore, 2016.
  • Zervos C. (ed.), Pablo Picasso Catalogue Raisonné, 33 vols. Paris: Éditions Cahiers d’Art, 1932-1978.