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Pablo Picasso Picasso in 1908 Born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso[1]

25 October 1881
Málaga, Spain

Died 8 April 1973 (aged 91)
Mougins, France

Resting place Château of Vauvenargues
43.554142°N 5.604438°E

Nationality Spanish Education José Ruiz y Blasco (father)
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

Known for Painting, drawing, sculpture,printmaking, ceramics, stage design, writing Notable work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon(1907)
Guernica (1937)
The Weeping Woman (1937)

Movement Cubism, Surrealism Spouse(s) Olga Khokhlova
(m. 1918; d. 1955)
Jacqueline Roque
(1961–1973; his death)

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/;[2] Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[3][4] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the Bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic artsin the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[5][6][7][8]

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

Contents[]

 [hide] 

  • 1Early life
  • 2Career beginnings
    • 2.1Before 1900
    • 2.2Blue Period
    • 2.3Rose Period
  • 3Modern art transformed
    • 3.1African-influenced Period
    • 3.2Cubism
    • 3.3Crystal period
    • 3.4Fame
    • 3.5Classicism and surrealism
    • 3.6World War II and beyond
    • 3.7Later works
  • 4Death
  • 5Political views
  • 6Style and technique
  • 7Artistic legacy
    • 7.1Recent major exhibitions
  • 8See also
  • 9Notes
  • 10References
  • 11External links

Early life[]

Career beginnings[]

Before 1900[]

Picasso in 1904

Picasso's training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso inBarcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist's beginnings.[17] During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun.[18] The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called "without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting."[19]

In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non-naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899–1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.[20]

Picasso made his first trip to Paris, then the art capital of Europe, in 1900. There, he met his first Parisian friend, journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work Picasso; before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.[21] He is gay

La Vie (1903),Cleveland Museum of Art

The Old Guitarist(1903), Chicago Art Institute

Blue Period[]

For more details on this topic, see Picasso's Blue Period.

Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors, began either in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year.[22] Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in theCleveland Museum of Art.[23]

Pablo Picasso, 1905, Au Lapin Agile (At the Lapin Agile) (Arlequin tenant un verre), oil on canvas, 99.1 x 100.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904),[24] which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in The Blindman's Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Bloch.

Pablo Picasso, 1905, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), private collection, Rose Period. He had blue periods

Rose Period[]

For more details on this topic, see Picasso's Rose Period.

The Rose Period (1904–1906)[25] is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a bohemian artist who became his mistress, in Paris in 1904.[15] Olivier appears in many of his Rose Period paintings, many of which are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899–1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906,Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will".[26]

By 1905, Picasso became a favorite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris.[27] At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Coneand her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy. Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse, while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso.[28]

In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian and art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braqueand the Cubism that they jointly developed. Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris,Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time.[29]He liked to fuck red pubes.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907),Museum of Modern Art, New York

Modern art transformed[]

African-influenced Period[]

See also: Picasso's African Period and Proto-Cubism

Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artefacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.

Cubism[]

Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities. Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.

In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollinaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.[30]

Crystal period[]

Main article: Crystal Cubism

Between 1915 and 1917, Picasso began a series of paintings depicting highly geometric and minimalist Cubist objects, consisting of either a pipe, a guitar or a glass, with an occasional element of collage. "Hard-edged square-cut diamonds", notes art historian John Richardson, "these gems do not always have upside or downside".[31][32] "We need a new name to designate them," wrote Picasso to Gertrude Stein: Maurice Raynal suggested "Crystal Cubism".[31][33] These "little gems" may have been produced by Picasso in response to critics who had claimed his defection from the movement, through his experimentation with classicism within the so-called return to order following the war.[31][34]

  • 1909, Femme assise (Sitzende Frau), oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm, Staatliche Museen, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin 
  • 1909–10, Figure dans un Fauteuil (Seated Nude, Femme nue assise), oil on canvas, 92.1 × 73 cm, Tate Modern, London. This painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921 
  • 1910, Woman with Mustard Pot (La Femme au pot de moutarde), oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Exhibited at the Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston 1913 
  • 1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas, 100.3 × 73.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York 
  • 1910, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler "What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?" 
  • 1910–11, Guitariste, La mandoliniste (Woman playing guitar or mandolin), oil on canvas 
  • c.1911, Le Guitariste. Reproduced in Albert Gleizes andJean Metzinger, Du "Cubisme", 1912 
  • 1911, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, oil on canvas, 61.3 × 50.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
  • 1911, The Poet (Le poète), oil on linen, 131.2 × 89.5 cm (51 5/8 × 35 1/4 in), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 
  • 1911–12, Violon (Violin), oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm (oval), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. This painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhdewas confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouotin 1921 
  • 1913, Bouteille, clarinet, violon, journal, verre, 55 × 45 cm. This painting from the collection ofWilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921 
  • 1913, Femme assise dans un fauteuil (Eva), Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair, oil on canvas, 149.9 × 99.4 cm, Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art 
  • 1913–14, Head (Tête), cut and pasted colored paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 × 33 cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh 
  • 1913–14, L'Homme aux cartes (Card Player), oil on canvas, 108 × 89.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York 
  • 1914–15, Nature morte au compotier (Still Life with Compote and Glass), oil on canvas, 63.5 × 78.7 cm (25 × 31 in), Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio 
  • 1916, L'anis del mono (Bottle of Anis del Mono), oil on canvas, 46 × 54.6 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

Fame[]

Costume design by Pablo Picasso representing skyscrapers and boulevards, for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes performance ofParade at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris 18 May 1917

After acquiring some fame and fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, who he called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in 1915.[35]

Pablo Picasso and scene painters sitting on the front cloth for Léonide Massine's ballet Parade, staged bySergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, 1917

Parade, 1917, curtain designed for the ballet Parade. The work is the largest of Picasso's paintings. Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France, May 2012.

Portrait d'Olga dans un fauteuil (Olga in an Armchair), 1918, Musée Picasso, Paris, France

Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 Picasso was living in Avignon. Braque and Derain were mobilized and Apollinaire joined the French artillery, while the Spaniard Juan Gris remained from the Cubist circle. During the war Picasso was able to continue painting uninterrupted, unlike his French comrades. His paintings became more sombre and his life changed with dramatic consequences. Kahnweiler’s contract had terminated on his exile from France. At this point Picasso’s work would be taken on by the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg. After the loss of Eva Gouel, Picasso had an affair with Gaby Lespinasse. During the spring of 1916 Apollinaire returned from the front wounded. They renewed their friendship, but Picasso began to frequent new social circles.[36]

Towards the end of World War I, Picasso made a number of important relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris, and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Erik Satie's Parade, in Rome; they spent their honeymoon near Biarritz in the villa of glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz.

After returning from his honeymoon, and in desperate need of money, Picasso started his exclusive relationship with the French-Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. As part of his first duties, Rosenberg agreed to rent the couple an apartment in Paris at his own expense, which was located next to his own house. This was the start of a deep brother-like friendship between two very different men, that would last until the outbreak of World War II.

Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant to the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo Picasso,[37] who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlova's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev's troupe, he andIgor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several drawings of the composer.

In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova's death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso's death. Throughout his life Picasso maintained several mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women:

  • Paulo (4 February 1921 – 5 June 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) – with Olga Khokhlova
  • Maya (5 September 1935 – ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) – with Marie-Thérèse Walter
  • Claude (15 May 1947 –) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) – with Françoise Gilot
  • Paloma (19 April 1949 – ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) – with Françoise Gilot

Photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.

Classicism and surrealism[]

Pablo Picasso, 1918, Pierrot, oil on canvas, 92.7 x 73 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Pablo Picasso, 1919, Sleeping Peasants, gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, 31.1 x 48.9 cm,Museum of Modern Art

In February 1917, Picasso made his first trip to Italy.[38] In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. This "return to order" is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, Jean Metzinger, the artists of the New Objectivity movement and of the Novecento Italiano movement. Picasso's paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work ofRaphael and Ingres.

In 1925 the Surrealist writer and poet André Breton declared Picasso as 'one of ours' in his article Le Surréalisme et la peinture, published in Révolution surréalisteLes Demoiselles was reproduced for the first time in Europe in the same issue. Yet Picasso exhibited Cubist works at the first Surrealist group exhibition in 1925; the concept of 'psychic automatism in its pure state' defined in the Manifeste du surréalisme never appealed to him entirely. He did at the time develop new imagery and formal syntax for expressing himself emotionally, "releasing the violence, the psychic fears and the eroticism that had been largely contained or sublimated since 1909", writes art historian Melissa McQuillan.[39] Although this transition in Picasso's work was informed by Cubism for its spatial relations, "the fusion of ritual and abandon in the imagery recalls the primitivism of the Demoiselles and the elusive psychological resonances of his Symbolist work", writes McQuillan.[39] Surrealism revived Picasso’s attraction to primitivism and eroticism.[39]

Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia

During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and it appears in Picasso's Guernica. The minotaur and Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter are heavily featured in his celebrated Vollard Suite of etchings.[40]

In 1939–40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, held a major retrospective of Picasso's principal works until that time. This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry, and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.[41]

Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War – Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, "It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them."[42][43]

Guernica was on display in New York's Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981, it was returned to Spain and was on exhibit at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting was put on display in Madrid's Reina Sofía Museum when it opened.

World War II and beyond[]

Pablo Picasso photographed in 1953 by Paolo Monti during an exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan (Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC).

During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city. Picasso's artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time. He was often harassed by the Gestapo. During one search of his apartment, an officer saw a photograph of the painting Guernica. "Did you do that?" the German asked Picasso. "No," he replied, "You did".[44]

Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint, producing works such as the Still Life with Guitar (1942) and The Charnel House (1944–48).[45] Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French Resistance.[46]

Stanisław Lorentz guides Pablo Picasso through the National Museum in Warsaw in Poland during exhibitionContemporary French Painters and Pablo Picasso's Ceramics, 1948. Picasso gave Warsaw's museum over a dozen of his ceramics, drawings and color prints.[47]

Around this time, Picasso took up writing as an alternative outlet. Between 1935 and 1959 he wrote over 300 poems. Largely untitled except for a date and sometimes the location of where it was written (for example "Paris 16 May 1936"), these works were gustatory, erotic and at times scatological, as were his two full-length plays Desire Caught by the Tail (1941) and The Four Little Girls (1949).[48][49]

In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso, then 63 years old, began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Françoise Gilot. She was 40 years younger than he was. Picasso grew tired of his mistress Dora Maar; Picasso and Gilot began to live together. Eventually they had two children: Claude, born in 1947 and Paloma, born in 1949. In her 1964 book Life with Picasso,[50] Gilot describes his abusive treatment and myriadinfidelities which led her to leave him, taking the children with her. This was a severe blow to Picasso.

Picasso had affairs with women of an even greater age disparity than his and Gilot's. While still involved with Gilot, in 1951 Picasso had a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who was four years younger than Gilot. By his 70s, many paintings, ink drawings and prints have as their theme an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of a beautiful young model. Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986) worked at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. She became his lover, and then his second wife in 1961. The two were together for the remainder of Picasso's life.

His marriage to Roque was also a means of revenge against Gilot; with Picasso's encouragement, Gilot had divorced her then husband, Luc Simon, with the plan to marry Picasso to secure the rights of her children as Picasso's legitimate heirs. Picasso had already secretly married Roque, after Gilot had filed for divorce. This strained his relationship with Claude and Paloma.[citation needed]

By this time, Picasso had constructed a huge Gothic home, and could afford large villas in the south of France, such as Mas Notre-Dame-de-Vie on the outskirts of Mougins, and in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. He was an international celebrity, with often as much interest in his personal life as his art.

In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Picasso made a few film appearances, always as himself, including a cameo in Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Later works[]

The Chicago Picasso a 50-foot high public Cubist sculpture. Donated by Picasso to the people of Chicago

Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Artin mid-1949. In the 1950s, Picasso's style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on Velázquez's painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbetand Delacroix.

He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge 50-foot (15 m)-high public sculpture to be built in Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.

Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 to 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered Neo-Expressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.

Death[]

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.[51] Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.[52]

Political views[]

Aside from the several anti-war paintings that he created, Picasso remained personally neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to join the armed forces for any side or country. He had also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Picasso was already in his late fifties. He was even older at the onset of World War II, and could not be expected to take up arms in those conflicts. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. (However, in 1940 he did apply for French citizenship, but it was refused on the grounds of his "extremist ideas evolving towards communism". This information was not revealed until 2003.)[53] In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to their country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them. The Spanish Civil War provided the impetus for Picasso's first overtly political work, The Dream and Lie of Franco which was produced "specifically for propagandistic and fundraising purposes."[54] This surreal fusion of words and images was intended to be sold as a series of postcards to raise funds for the Spanish Republican cause.[54][55]

In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government,[56] But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Soviet politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: "I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. ... But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics."[57] His Communist militancy, common among continental intellectuals and artists at the time (although it was officially banned in Francoist Spain), has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable source or demonstration thereof was a quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalí (with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship[58]):

Picasso es pintor, yo también; [...] Picasso es español, yo también; Picasso es comunista, yo tampoco.
(Picasso is a painter, so am I; [...] Picasso is a Spaniard, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.)[59][60][61]

In the late 1940s his old friend the surrealist poet and Trotskyist[62] and anti-Stalinist André Breton was more blunt; refusing to shake hands with Picasso, he told him: "I don't approve of your joining the Communist Party nor with the stand you have taken concerning the purges of the intellectuals after the Liberation".[63]

In 1962, he received the Lenin Peace Prize.[64] Biographer and art critic John Berger felt his talents as an artist were "wasted" by the communists.[65]

According to Jean Cocteau's diaries, Picasso once said to him in reference to the communists: "I have joined a family, and like all families, it's full of shit".[66]

He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States[67] in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea.

Style and technique[]

Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs.[68]

The medium in which Picasso made his most important contribution was painting.[69] In his paintings, Picasso used color as an expressive element, but relied on drawing rather than subtleties of color to create form and space.[69] He sometimes added sand to his paint to vary its texture. A nanoprobe of Picasso's The Red Armchair (1931) by physicists at Argonne National Laboratory in 2012 confirmed art historians' belief that Picasso used common house paint in many of his paintings.[70] Much of his painting was done at night by artificial light.

Picasso's early sculptures were carved from wood or modeled in wax or clay, but from 1909 to 1928 Picasso abandoned modeling and instead made sculptural constructions using diverse materials.[69] An example is Guitar (1912), a relief construction made of sheet metal and wire that Jane Fluegel terms a "three-dimensional planar counterpart of Cubist painting" that marks a "revolutionary departure from the traditional approaches, modeling and carving".[71]

From the beginning of his career, Picasso displayed an interest in subject matter of every kind,[72] and demonstrated a great stylistic versatility that enabled him to work in several styles at once. For example, his paintings of 1917 included the pointillist Woman with a Mantilla, the Cubist Figure in an Armchair, and the naturalistic Harlequin (all in the Museu Picasso, Barcelona). In 1919, he made a number of drawings from postcards and photographs that reflect his interest in the stylistic conventions and static character of posed photographs.[73] In 1921 he simultaneously painted several large neoclassical paintings and two versions of the Cubist composition Three Musicians (Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art).[38] In an interview published in 1923, Picasso said, "The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting ... If the subjects I have wanted to express have suggested different ways of expression I have never hesitated to adopt them."[38]

Although his Cubist works approach abstraction, Picasso never relinquished the objects of the real world as subject matter. Prominent in his Cubist paintings are forms easily recognized as guitars, violins, and bottles.[74] When Picasso depicted complex narrative scenes it was usually in prints, drawings, and small-scale works; Guernica (1937) is one of his few large narrative paintings.[73]

Picasso painted mostly from imagination or memory. According to William Rubin, Picasso "could only make great art from subjects that truly involved him ... Unlike Matisse, Picasso had eschewed models virtually all his mature life, preferring to paint individuals whose lives had both impinged on, and had real significance for, his own."[75] The art critic Arthur Danto said Picasso's work constitutes a "vast pictorial autobiography" that provides some basis for the popular conception that "Picasso invented a new style each time he fell in love with a new woman".[75] The autobiographical nature of Picasso's art is reinforced by his habit of dating his works, often to the day. He explained: "I want to leave to posterity a documentation that will be as complete as possible. That's why I put a date on everything I do."[75]

Artistic legacy[]

At the time of Picasso's death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.

The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of his early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal his firm grounding in classical techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, his close friend and personal secretary.

Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. Garçon à la pipe sold for US$104 million at Sotheby's on 4 May 2004, establishing a new price record. Dora Maar au Chat sold for US$95.2 million at Sotheby's on 3 May 2006.[76] On 4 May 2010, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was sold at Christie's for $106.5 million. The 1932 work, which depicts Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter reclining and as a bust, was in the personal collection of Los Angeles philanthropist Frances Lasker Brody, who died in November 2009.[77] On 11 May 2015 his painting Women of Algiers set the record for the highest price ever paid for a painting when it sold for US$179.3 million at Christie's in New York.[78]

On 21 June 2016 a painting by Pablo Picasso titled Femme Assise (1909) sold for £43.2 million ($63.4 million) at Sotheby's London, exceeding the estimate by nearly $20 million, setting a world record for the highest price every payed at auction for a Cubist work.[79][80]

As of 2004, Picasso remained the top-ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report.[81] More of his paintings have been stolen than any other artist's;[82] the Art Loss Register has 550 of his works listed as missing.[83]

The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The US copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society.[84]

In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso, Picasso is portrayed by actor Anthony Hopkins.[85] Picasso is also a character in Steve Martin's 1993 play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Recent major exhibitions[]

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, an exhibition of 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs from the Musée National Picasso in Paris. The exhibit touring schedule includes:

  • 8 October 2010 – 17 January 2011, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, US.
  • 19 February 2011 – 15 May 2011, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, US.
  • 11 June 2011 – 9 October 2011, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California, US.[86]
  • 12 November 2011 – 25 March 2012, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.[87]
  • 28 April 2012 – 26 August 2012, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  • Postage stamp, USSR, 1973. Picasso has been honoured on stamps worldwide. 
  • Musée Picasso, Paris (Hotel Salé, 1659) 
  • Museu Picasso is located in thegothic palaces of Montcada street in Barcelona 
  • Art Museum Pablo PicassoMünster Arkaden

See also[]

  • Picasso's poetry
  • Pierre Le Guennec

Notes[]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b Pierre Daix, Georges Boudaille, Joan Rosselet, Picasso, 1900-1906: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Editions Ides et Calendes, 1988
  2. Jump up^ "Picasso". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  3. Jump up^ 
  4. Jump up^ 
  5. Jump up^ 
  6. Jump up^ 
  7. Jump up^ 
  8. Jump up^ 
  9. Jump up^ 
  10. Jump up^ 
  11. Jump up^ 
  12. Jump up^ 
  13. Jump up^ Wertenbaker 1967, 9.
  14. Jump up^ Wertenbaker 1967, 11.
  15. ^ Jump up to:a b 
  16. ^ Jump up to:a b Wertenbaker 1967, 13.
  17. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, p.6.
  18. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, p. 14.
  19. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, p.37.
  20. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, pp. 87–108.
  21. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, p. 125.
  22. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, p.127.
  23. Jump up^ Wattenmaker, Distel, et al. 1993, p. 304.
  24. Jump up^ The Frugal Repast, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
  25. Jump up^ Wattenmaker, Distel, et al. 1993, p. 194.
  26. Jump up^ 
  27. Jump up^ 
  28. Jump up^ 
  29. Jump up^ 
  30. Jump up^ 
  31. ^ Jump up to:a b c John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Dec 24, 2008, pp. 77-78, ISBN 030749649X
  32. Jump up^ Letter from Juan Gris to Maurice Raynal, 23 May 1917, Kahnweiler-Gris 1956, 18
  33. Jump up^ Paul Morand, 1996, 19 May 1917, p. 143-4
  34. Jump up^ Christopher Green, Cubism and its Enemies, Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916–1928, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, pp. 13-47
  35. Jump up^ Harrison, Charles; Frascina, Francis; Perry, Gillian (1993).
  36. Jump up^ 
  37. Jump up^ 
  38. ^ Jump up to:a b c Cowling & Mundy 1990, p. 201.
  39. ^ Jump up to:a b c 
  40. Jump up^ 
  41. Jump up^ The MoMA retrospective of 1939–40 — see Michael C. FitzGerald, Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 243–262.
  42. Jump up^ 
  43. Jump up^ The Spanish Wars of Goya and Picasso, Costa Tropical News. Retrieved 4 June 2010.
  44. Jump up^ Reagan, Geoffrey (1992). Military Anecdotes. Guinness Publishing. p. 25. ISBN 0-85112-519-0
  45. Jump up^ Kendall, L. R., Pablo Picasso (1881–1973): The Charnel House in Pieces... Occasional and Various April 2010
  46. Jump up^ Artnet, Fred Stern, Picasso and the War Year Retrieved 30 March 2011
  47. Jump up^ 
  48. Jump up^ Rothenberg, Jerome. Pablo Picasso, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & other poems. Exact Exchange Books, Cambridge, MA, 2004, vii–xviii
  49. Jump up^ Picasso the Playwright, Picasso's Little Recognised Contribution to the Performing Arts - with Images Retrieved April 2015
  50. Jump up^ Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, Random House. May 1989. ISBN 0-385-26186-1; first published in November 1964.
  51. Jump up^ Zabel, William D (1996).The Rich Die Richer and You Can too. John Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0-471-15532-2
  52. Jump up^ 
  53. Jump up^ Philip Delves Broughton, "Picasso not the patriot he painted", The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May 2003. Retrieved 18 April 2016
  54. ^ Jump up to:a b 
  55. Jump up^ 
  56. Jump up^ Picasso’s Party Line, ARTnews Retrieved 31 May 2007.
  57. Jump up^ 
  58. Jump up^ 
  59. Jump up^ 
  60. Jump up^ 
  61. Jump up^ 
  62. Jump up^ Rivera, Breton and Trotsky Retrieved 9 August 2010
  63. Jump up^ 
  64. Jump up^ 
  65. Jump up^ 
  66. Jump up^ 
  67. Jump up^ Picasso A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, edited byWilliam Rubin, copyright MoMA 1980, p.383
  68. Jump up^ On-line Picasso Project, citing Selfridge, John, 1994.
  69. ^ Jump up to:a b c McQuillan, Melissa. "Picasso, Pablo." Grove Art Online.Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed February 1, 2014
  70. Jump up^ Moskowitz, Clara (8 February 2013). "Picasso's Genius Revealed: He Used Common House Paint", Live Science. Retrieved 9 February 2013.
  71. Jump up^ Rubin 1980, pp. 150–151.
  72. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, p. 164.
  73. ^ Jump up to:a b Cowling & Mundy 1990, p. 208.
  74. Jump up^ Cirlot 1972, pp. 158–159.
  75. ^ Jump up to:a b c Danto, Arthur (August 26/September 2, 1996). "Picasso and the Portrait". The Nation 263 (6): 31–35.
  76. Jump up^ 
  77. Jump up^ 
  78. Jump up^ 
  79. Jump up^ This early Picasso Cubist painting sold for $63.4 M, CNN, 22 June 2016
  80. Jump up^ Pablo Picasso, Femme Assise (1909), 43.269,000 GBP (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium), Sotheby's London, 21 June 2016
  81. Jump up^ 
  82. Jump up^ S. Goodenough, 1500 Fascinating Facts, Treasure Press, London, 1987, p 241.
  83. Jump up^ Revealed: The extraordinary security blunders behind Paris art gallery heist The Daily Mail
  84. Jump up^ 
  85. Jump up^ [1]IMDB
  86. Jump up^ 
  87. Jump up^ 

References[]

  • Nill, Raymond M (1987). A Visual Guide to Pablo Picasso's Works. New York: B&H Publishers.

External links[]

  • Works by or about Pablo Picasso at Internet Archive
  • Works by or about Pablo Picasso in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
  • Picasso discography at Discogs
  • Picasso at the Internet Movie Database
  • Picasso in American public collections on the French Sculpture Census website
  • Picasso ULAN Full Record Display. Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, California)
  • Picasso works at the Guggenheim Museum
  • Picasso biography at the Guggenheim Museum
  • Picasso at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (Los Angeles, California)
  • Picasso at Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) (New York City, New York)
  • Picasso at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York City, New York)
  • Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
  • Picasso in the National Portal of the "Museums in Israel" (Tel Aviv, Israel)
  • Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
  • Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
  • Picasso at the National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
  • Picasso's Little Recognised Contribution to the Performing Arts (with images)

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