Question: What is a common motif of Picasso's Blue Period?
About the article "Pablo Picasso", section "Blue Period".

Candidate passages:
The Rose Period comes from the time when the style of Pablo Picasso's painting used cheerful orange and pink colours in contrast to the cool, somber tones of the previous Blue Period.
The Rose Period lasted from 1904 to 1906.
Picasso was happy in his relationship with Fernande Olivier whom he had met in 1904 and this has been suggested as one of the possible reasons he changed his style of painting.
Harlequins, circus performers and clowns appear frequently in the Rose Period and populated Picasso's paintings at various stages throughout the rest of his long career.
The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso.
The Rose Period has been considered French influenced, while the Blue Period more Spanish influenced, although both styles emerged while Picasso was living in Paris.
Picasso's Blue Period began in late 1901, following the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas and the onset of a bout of major depression.
It lasted until 1904, when Picasso's psychological condition improved.
The Rose Period is named after Picasso's heavy use of pink tones in his works from this period, from the French word for pink, which is "rose".
Picasso's highest selling painting, "Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a pipe)" was painted during the Rose Period.
Other significant Rose Period works include: "Woman in a Chemise (Madeleine)" (1904–05), "The Actor" (1904–1905), "Lady with a Fan" (1905), "Two Youths" (1905), "Harlequin Family" (1905), "Harlequin's Family With an Ape" (1905), "La famille de saltimbanques" (1905), "Boy with a Dog" (1905), "Nude Boy" (1906), "Boy Leading a Horse" (1906), and "The Girl with a Goat" (1906).
The Rose Period was followed by Picasso's African influenced period, where his Proto-Cubist work took form.
The most famous painting from Picasso's African Period is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, painted in 1907, which created a sensation among critics and the public when it was exhibited in 1916. 
Picasso's African Period, which lasted from 1906 to 1909, was the period when Pablo Picasso painted in a style which was strongly influenced by African sculpture.
This proto-Cubist period following Picasso's Blue Period and Rose Period has also been called the Negro Period, or Black Period. 
  "Thomas Mann's conception of the nekyia draws extensively from 'the doctrines of the East... Gnosticism, and Hellenism'".
Jung considered Picasso's "early Blue Period ... as the symbol of Nekya, a descent into hell and darkness".
"Nekyia" is also a popular name assumed by numerous art projects and performance or music groups.  
Les Noces de Pierrette (English:"The marriage of Pierrette") is a painting by the Spanish artist and sculptor, Pablo Picasso.
Painted in 1905, during Picasso's Blue Period; a time when the artist faced poverty and depression following the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas in 1901. 
In February 1917, Picasso made his first trip to Italy.
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 of Raphael 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 surréaliste".
"Les 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.
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.
Surrealism revived Picasso’s attraction to primitivism and eroticism.
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.
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 lionised 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.
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.
""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.