Pablo Picasso Blue Period Cubism 1907 - 1915 Pablo Picasso's Blue Period refers to a series of paintings in which the color blue dominates and which he painted between 1901 and 1904. The blue period is a marvelous expression of poetic subtlety and personal melancholy and contributes to the transition of Picasso's style from classicism to abstract art. As one of the founders of modern abstract art, Pablo Picasso is generally associated with cubism and related styles which are predominantly abstract. It is therefore essential to realize that at the time of Picasso's blue period, abstract art as we know it today didn't yet exist. As a twenty year old man Pablo Picasso was an accomplished classicist painter, but like many young artists of his time, he was dissatisfied with the dogmas of traditional art. Predecessors like C�zanne and the impressionists had shown how departures from classicism could result in a more direct visual language. And to a great extent Picasso and his contemporaries were experiencing the after-shock of an artistic eruption called Vincent Van Gogh, which hurdled an astonished art world into the 20th century and towards abstract art.

Inspired by a tradition that had grown suspicious of classicism, the blue period marks the end of a development in which the young Pablo Picasso is trying to formulate his pictorial means that solve the problems and limitations of classicism and would eventually culminate in cubism and the first steps towards modern abstract art. On an emotional note, melancholy and resignation best characterize Picasso's blue period. When Picasso's close friend Carlos Casagemas commits suicide, Picasso's trauma finds expression in a series of deeply sentimental paintings which comprise his blue period. The death of Casagemas In October 1900, at the age of 19, Pablo Picasso moved to Paris, in the company of Carlos Casagemas. They had known each other since 1899, having met at the Els Quatre Gats caf� in Barcelona, which was a meeting place for artists and intellectuals. Picasso's early days in Paris are characterized by poverty, which may have contributed to the melancholy of his blue period paintings, but it's certain that the sadness of his blue period paintings alienated potential buyers of his art work and thus, in turn, contributed to his poverty.

While his time in Paris is of fundamental importance to his artistic development during the blue period, Picasso spent most of his time in Barcelona, until in 1904 he moved to Paris definitively. While Casagemas takes his own life in Paris, Picasso is in Spain. The death of Casagemas painting testifies of Picasso's shock and horror over the suicide of his friend. In the sense of Picasso dealing with his trauma this painting belongs to the blue period, but it doesn't have the atmosphere of resignation and silent mourning that his blue paintings would have. Evocation Possibly in the tradition of marrying the divine to the profane the lower half of the Evocation - the burial of Casagemas painting shows a burial, while the upper half may represent how these two young men envisaged heaven: plenty of scarcely dressed women and a mother with children. Life This theme returns in one of Picasso's last blue period paintings, called Life. Casagemas had shot himself in a Parisian caf� after having been refused by a woman he was in love with.

The Life painting shows Casagemas, again with a lover and a mother with child, but this time Picasso shows a Casagemas who is alive, the faces of the company of people still melancholic, but the left leg of Casagemas treading forward and a left finger pointing upward, showing an undefeated Casagemas. It seems that his painting marks the end of Picasso's trauma and his blue period. The main theme of both Evocation - the burial of Casagemas and Life is that they contain Picasso's best wishes for his friend and may be related to the the reason of Casagemas' suicide: in both paintings Casagemas is surrounded by lovers and the family that Picasso would have wished him. Picasso's depression didn't end with the beginning of his rose period, which succeeded the blue period and in which the color pink dominates in many of his paintings. In fact, it lasted until the end of his cubist period (which followed the rose period) and only in the period thereafter, which was his neo-classicist period, did Picasso's work begin the show the playfulness that would remain a prominent feature of his work for the rest of his life.

Picasso's contemporaries didn't even distinguish between a blue and a rose period but regarded the two as one single period. Portrait of Jaime Sabart�s A very interesting trait of Picasso was the way in which he was able to emulate the styles and methods of other painters and as such create paintings that were still original. The Absinthe Drinker The influence of Van Gogh is clearly visible in The Death of Casagemas, as well as in Portrait of Jaime Sabart�s (The beer glass) with their heavily textured impasto, dark contours and contrasting colors. The accuracy with which Picasso reproduces the style of Gauguin in The Absinthe Drinker is uncanny, but he adds his own subtle Picasso line. Picasso would continue to occasionally emulate the styles of other artists, but these paintings never raise the impression that Picasso tried to appropriate the style and deny its source - he simply enjoyed to imitate other artists, like an actor.

Pablo Picasso's Rose Period Biography Pablo Picasso's Rose Period - 1904 to 1906 The Rose Period of Picasso lasted from 1904 to 1906 This period signifies the time when the style of Pablo Picasso's painting used cheerful orange and pink colors in contrast to the cool, somber tones of the previous Blue Period. During these few years, 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 will populate Picasso's paintings at various stages through the rest of his long career. While Pablo Picasso's Blue Period is far more popular with the general public today, his Rose Period is of greater art-historical importance. During his Rose Period, Pablo Picasso would, for the first time in his career, develop stylistic means that would become part of his Picasso Style, which made him the most important artist of the 20th century.

Then, in 1904, Picasso's work regains its romantic quality in a series of paintings in warmer colors, many of them in the color pink. Picasso's Rose Period paintings still show resignation, but no mourning and while his Blue Period paintings seem to serve to express Picasso's sorrow, his Rose Period style begins to lead a life of its own, in the artistic spirit of his time: it's not the subject and its content that matters most, but the painting itself. Picasso goes on to experiment in a style that renders his subjects anonymous, resulting in an artistic matrix of a person, rather than a person. See for instance Seated Female Nude (1905). The type of person is recognizable, not the person itself. The subject is characterized, not portrayed. This, although a step in the direction of abstract art, is not most important feature of Picasso's Rose Period. Picasso's Rose period breakthrough consists in the fluency of line he was beginning to achieve in 1904. Although the painting Family of Acrobats with Monkey (1905) is quite classical in style, its line is as suggestive as Picasso's later, more abstract work.

This subtlety of line is Picasso's unique contribution to expressionism. In general one can say that there is a trade-off between subtlety and expression, and the directness of expressionism seems crude to the classicist. During his career, Picasso would continue to explore how to combine expressionism with classicism, a process for which he laid the basis in his Rose Period. In 1905, at the age of 24, Pablo Picasso painted Boy with a Pipe soon after settling in Montmartre, France. It is an oil-on-canvas painting, which depicts a local boy who regularly visited Picasso's Montmartre studio, holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland of flowers. The Rose Period marks the end of a development in which Picasso finds his style as a figurative painter. His years in Paris had made him absorb the French culture, replacing the earnesty of his Blue Period with Parisian elegance, see Girl in a Chemise , 1905. From his Rose Period on, Picasso would continue to produce figurative art occasionally, but it would never again be his main style.

MOST POPULAR PAINTINGS Pablo Picasso's Blue Period Biography Pablo Picasso's Blue Period - 1901 to 1904 The Blue Period of Picasso is the period between 1900 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. These somber works, inspired by Spain but painted in Paris, are now some of his most popular works, although he had difficulty selling them at the time. Picasso settled in Paris in 1904, having spent a few difficult years with no fixed studio and little artistic success. While back in 1903, he had produced his Blue Period works, which seemed to reflect his experience of relative poverty and instability, depicting beggars, street urchines, the old and frail and the blind. This period's starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year.

In choosing austere color and sometimes doleful subject matter - prostitutes, beggars and drunks are frequent subjects - Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who took his life at the LHippodrome Cafe in Paris, France by shooting himself in the right temple on February 17, 1901. Although Picasso himself later recalled, "I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas's death", art historian Helene Seckel has written: "While we might be right to retain this psychologizing justification, we ought not lose sight of the chronology of events: Picasso was not there when Casagemas committed suicide in Paris ... it was only in the fall that this dramatic event emerged in his painting, with several portraits of the deceased". At this time Picasso was very open to artistic influences around him, and events of these years would have a major effect on his: the exhibition of Fauve works, particularly those of Henri Matisse . Picasso responded to the new avant-grade developments of the Fauve painters in Paris by exploring new directions himself, creating his ground-breaking style.

Picasso's depression didn't end with the beginning of his rose period, which succeeded the blue period and in which the color pink dominates in many of his paintings. In fact, it lasted until the end of his cubist period (which followed the rose period) and only in the period thereafter, which was his neo-classicist period, did Picasso's work begin the show the playfulness that would remain a prominent feature of his work for the rest of his life. Picasso's contemporaries didn't even distinguish between a blue and a rose period but regarded the two as one single period. Starting in the latter part of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie , painted in 1903 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art . The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), 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 frequent subjects include female nudes and mothers with children. A significant influence on Picasso's blue period paintings was his visit to a woman's prison called St. Lazare in Paris, where nuns served as guards. The Two sisters is an example of how Picasso used to mix daily reality with Christian iconography. The posture and gestures of the women were derived from the way artists depict the visitation, the color blue symbolizing Mary, the Mother of God. The meeting, or visitation, refers to the meeting between Mary, Mother of God and the mother of John the Baptist. An ever returning theme in Picasso's blue period (and also in his rose period) is the desolation of social outsiders, whether they be prisoners, beggars, circus people or poor or despairing people in general. Not only did this theme answer to his blue mood, but it also answered to the zeitgeist (the spirit of the time) of the artistic and intellectual avant garde at the beginning of the twentieth century.

MOST POPULAR PAINTINGS Pablo Picasso's Rose Period Cubism 1907 - 1915 While Pablo Picasso's Blue Period is far more popular with the general public today, his Rose Period is of greater art-historical importance. During his Rose Period, Pablo Picasso would, for the first time in his career, develop stylistic means that would become part of his Picasso Style, which made him the most important artist of the 20th century. The Rose Period started in 1904, a year in which Picasso alternated paintings in the "blue style", dark colored (often blueish) and downbeat, with paintings made in his "rose style", which are somewhat more optimistic in mood and brighter colored (often using the color pink). So 1904 is a transitional year and belongs neither truly to the blue period, nor to the rose period. Woman with crow Pablo Picasso was a creature of the 19th century. Although he spent most of his life in the 20th century, his work and thinking would remain a product of 19th century romanticism.

Romanticism refers to a cultural movement that started at the end of the 18th century, a century that was dominated by the Enlightenment. Enlightenment resulted from scientific advances and favored a climate of reason and rationalization. The romanticists rebelled against this school of thought by emphasizing the value of emotions, aesthetics and imagination. In the visual arts this led the artist away from copying nature and towards self-expression. The ultimate consequence of this process would be abstract art, in which Pablo Picasso's cubism would play a pivotal role. Pablo Picasso began to develop a highly romantic style of painting in 1899, which ended in 1901, after his close friend Carlos Casagemas had committed suicide. The ensuing Blue Period would be characterized by resignation and mourning and consists of downbeat portraits of the underprivileged of society, paintings in which the color blue dominates. Seated female nude Then, in 1904, Picasso's work regains its romantic quality in a series of paintings in warmer colors, many of them in the color pink.

Picasso's Rose Period paintings still show resignation, but no mourning and while his Blue Period paintings seem to serve to express Picasso's sorrow, his Rose Period style begins to lead a life of its own, in the artistic spirit of his time: it's not the subject and its content that matters most, but the painting itself. Picasso goes on to experiment in a style that renders his subjects anonymous, resulting in an artistic matrix of a person, rather than a person. See for instance Seated Female Nude (1905). The type of person is recognizable, not the person itself. The subject is characterized, not portrayed. This, although a step in the direction of abstract art, is not most important feature of Picasso's Rose Period. Family of acrobats with monkey Picasso's Rose period breakthrough consists in the fluency of line he was beginning to achieve in 1904. Although the painting "Family of Acrobats with Monkey" (1905) is quite classical in style, its line is as suggestive as Picasso's later, more abstract work. This subtlety of line is Picasso's unique contribution to expressionism.

In general one can say that there is a trade-off between subtlety and expression, and the directness of expressionism seems crude to the classicist. During his career, Picasso would continue to explore how to combine expressionism with classicism, a process for which he laid the basis in his Rose Period. Boy with pipe From May 2004 until June 2006 the most expensive painting in the world was "Boy with pipe" (1905, $104,000,000). This painting shows but few signs of the above-mentioned process and is therefore in this author's opinion not a very important Rose Period painting. Rather, it answers to the sissy-boy fad of the 1990s and the painting's high price might be interpreted in that context. Acrobat with young harelequin One aspect of 19th century romanticism is that artists were seen as undervalued, social outcasts and martyrs of cultural refinement, a theme on which Picasso elaborates during his Rose Period. Picasso's contempories refer to his "Harlequin" period, as Picasso starts to use circus artists as his main source of inspiration.

In the 19th century the circus artist would symbolize the artist in general and his martyrdom in particular. Mocked and marginalised by society, the circus artist would perform with pride and earnesty, in dedication to his art. The actor According to 19th century romancticism (which would find wide-spread acceptance) there was no principle difference between a circus clown and a fine artist, in the way they bore their artistic martyrdom. Indeed, a major commercial breakthrough for Picasso occurred when Clovis Savigot, a former circus clown who had started an art gallery in Paris, began to feature Picasso's work, possibly attracted by Picasso's paintings of circus artists. Through Savigot's gallery, Picasso came in contact with Leo and Gertrude Stein, who would become important collectors of avant-garde art. The Rose Period marks the end of a development in which Picasso finds his style as a figurative painter. His years in Paris had made him absorb the French culture, replacing the earnesty of his Blue Period with Parisian elegance, see Girl in a Chemise , 1905. From his Rose Period on, Picasso would continue to produce figurative art occasionally, but it would never again be his main style.

Harlequin with glass During his Rose Period, Picasso joined the Parisian radical-intellectualist literary scene, which was influenced by philosophers like Max Sterner (1806 - 1856). Sterner believed in individual self-realization through "voluntary egoism", with morality being an artificial concept that limited the freedom of the individual. Thus, he heralded the 20th Century of the Self and his rejection of morality would be seized upon by the Nazi-ideologists and anyone else that sought to legitimize anti-social behaviour. Guillaume Appollinaire tended to equate morality to puritanism and compiled a bibliography of pornographic works, and also published a magazine called "La Revue Immoraliste". Picasso befriended Appolinaire, as well as Max Jacob and Andr� Salmon, who were important to him for their work as art critics and avant-garde leaders. While mainstream art would idealize the upper (-middle) classes, Picasso's depiction of the margins of society (to which circus artists appeared to belong) was a conscious move towards the political left.

During his Rose Period, Picasso would become commercially successful and later in his life he would mostly adopt an anti-intellecual stance, interrupted by recurring flirtations with the extreme left (which in the art world was nothing out the ordinary). Picasso could have - but did not aspire to - become a society painter in the classical sense, but found in the emerging artistic avant-garde an alertnative to the mainstream art world. But according to some (like his prot�g� Joan Miro), he did adapt his style to the wishes of potential buyers, masterful as he was at balancing artistic with commercial needs. Reference: Picasso, by Carsten-Peter Warncke - Ingo F. Walther, Taschen GmbH, ISBN 3-8228-1260-9.

Pablo Picasso’s Rose Period (1904-1906) | Masterworks Fine Art Masterworks Fine Art > Art World News > Pablo Picasso’s Rose Period (1904-1906) Pablo Picasso’s Rose Period (1904-1906) Pablo Picasso’s Rose Period (1904-1906) coincides with a period of increased personal joy and romance for Picasso. In 1904, Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a French artist and model who became his muse and mistress. Olivier is credited for partially inspiring Picasso’s artistic transition from the cold, somber tone of the Blue Period to the increased warmth and lightness of the Rose Period. Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimanques, 1905, Oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Art Pablo Picasso, Acrobat and Young Harlequin, 1905 By 1904, Picasso had traded the blue palette and bleak subject matter of his Blue Period for a predominantly red, pink, and orange palette. This period accordingly became known as the Rose Period (1904-1906).

With his Rose Period, Picasso favored a lighter, warmer color palette, subtle use of line, idealized forms, and more spirited subjects, such as circus performers. Picasso became fascinated with the fairground and circus performers and began to convey these saltimbanques and harlequins within his works. Picasso observed the saltimbanques firsthand at the Cirque Medrano and in the streets and the outskirts of Paris, where a migrant community of acrobats, musicians, and clowns often entertained passing spectators. Within the paintings, gouaches, drawings, and prints that he created during the Rose Period, Picasso tends to depict his circus performers at rest, often in isolation or accompanied by fellow performers. Despite the warm color palette, the viewer senses a hint of listlessness and longing within the figures’ blank stares. In keeping with their relatively impoverished circumstances and the saltimbanque’s traditional role as the symbol of the neglected artist, a pervasive languor permeates Picasso’s Rose Period images. Pablo Picasso, Mother and Child, Acrobats 1904-05 Throughout the Rose Period, Picasso produced many works addressing themes of discontent, isolation and dignified alienation.

Family of Saltimbanques, one of Picasso’s most famous Rose Period works, depicts a vagabond troupe of circus performers in a desolate landscape. This work conveys a sense of collective alienation and sorrow; the figures huddle together yet fail to interact. At the time, circus performers and artists were often considered kindred souls – both were viewed as independent, courageous individuals idolized by the counter-culture crowd but deplored by the mainstream population. With works such as Family of Saltimbanques, Picasso hoped to elevate these outcasts by featuring them as the subjects of his beautiful yet haunting Rose Period Master works despite complaints. Pablo Picasso, La Toilette, 1906, Oil on Canvas, Albright-Knox, New York While Picasso worked predominantly as a painter during the Rose Period, he also created resplendent prints in the style of the Rose Period. These marvelous prints are often created after the image of renowned Picasso paintings, such as Les Saltimbanques (The Acrobats) and Madame Ricardo Canals. The Rose Period highlights Picasso’s shift from figurative work towards a more expressive and abstract use of color and line and represents the beginning of artistic prosperity and renown for Picasso.

As a result, these exquisite prints, created in the style of the Rose Period, are amongst Picasso’s most alluring and collectible prints in today’s market. REFERENCES: Fox, A. (2011). Picasso: The women behind the artist. Retrieved from: National Gallery of Art. (2014). Picasso: The early years, 1892-1906. Retrieved from: MORE ON PABLO PICASSO: Pablo Picasso Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth Pablo Picasso Net Worth Pablo Picasso net worth: $500 Million Pablo Picasso Net Worth: Pablo Picasso was a Spanish artist who had a net worth of $500 million dollars at the time of his death. Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in October 1881 and passed away in April 1973. He was a painter, sculptor, ceramicist, printmaker, stage designer, poet, and playwright. Picasso is one of the most influential artists of all time and was the co-founder of the Cubist movement. He also invented constructed sculpture and co-invented collage.

Some of Picasso's best known works include Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica. He painted as a child and adolescent. Picasso's work is often categorized into his Blue Period (1901-1904), Rose Period (1904-1906), African-influenced Period (1907-1909), Analytic Cubism (1909-1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919). His paintings Garcon a la pipe sold for $104 million, Dora Maar au Chat for $95.2 million, and Nude, Green Leaves and Bust for $106.5 million. In 2011 and 2012 the collection Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris was exhibited in Seattle, Richmond, San Francisco, Sydney, and Toronto. His relatives inaugurated the Museo Picasso Malaga in Spain in 2003. Many of his early works are housed at the Museo Picasso in Barcelona. His is the top ranked artist based on sales of his work at auctions.

More of Picasso's paintings have been stolen than any other artist. Pablo Picasso passed away on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91. He was married twice and had four children. Pablo Picasso on ArtStack - art online 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 arts in 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 Early life[ edit ] Pablo Picasso with his sister Lola, 1889 Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, [1] a series of names honoring various saints and relatives. [9] Ruiz y Picasso were included for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law.

Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López. [10] His mother was of one quarter Italian descent, from the territory of Genoa . [11] Though baptized a Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist. [12] Picasso's family was of middle-class background. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz's ancestors were minor aristocrats. Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil". [13] From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models.

His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork. Pablo Picasso, 1901, Old Woman (Woman with Gloves), oil on cardboard, 67 × 52.1 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art Pablo Picasso, 1901-02, Femme au café (Absinthe Drinker), oil on canvas, 73 × 54 cm, Hermitage Museum , Saint Petersburg, Russia The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son's technique, an apocryphal story relates, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting, [14] though paintings by him exist from later years. In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria . [15] After her death, the family moved to Barcelona , where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts.

Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home. [16] Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a small room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings. The two argued frequently. Picasso's father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , the country's foremost art school. [16] At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrollment. Madrid held many other attractions. The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez , Francisco Goya , and Francisco Zurbarán . Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco ; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso's later work.

Before 1900[ edit ] Picasso in 1904. Photograph by Ricard Canals . 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 in Barcelona, 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] Blue Period[ edit ] 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 the Cleveland Museum of Art .

[23] Pablo Picasso, 1905, Au Lapin Agile (At the Lapin Agile) (Arlequin tenant un verre), oil on canvas, 99.1 × 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 . Rose Period[ edit ] 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 Cone and 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 Braque and 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] Cubism[ edit ] 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] 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 Fame[ edit ] Costume design by Pablo Picasso representing skyscrapers and boulevards, for Serge Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes performance of Parade 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 by Sergei 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 and Igor 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[ edit ] Pablo Picasso, 1918, Pierrot, oil on canvas, 92.7 × 73 cm, Museum of Modern Art , New York Pablo Picasso, 1919, Sleeping Peasants, gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, 31.1 × 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 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. [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] 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] Guernica , 1937, Museo Reina Sofia 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[ edit ] 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 exhibition Contemporary 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 myriad infidelities 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. His strained relationship with Claude and Paloma was never healed. [51] 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[ edit ] 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 Art in 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 , Courbet and 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[ edit ] 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. [52] Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old. [53] Political views[ edit ] 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.) [54] 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." [55] 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 .

[55] [56] 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, [57] 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." [58] 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 [59] ): 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.) [60] [61] [62] In the late 1940s his old friend the surrealist poet and Trotskyist [63] 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". [64] Massacre in Korea , 1951 In 1962, he received the Lenin Peace Prize . [65] Biographer and art critic John Berger felt his talents as an artist were "wasted" by the communists. [66] 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". [67] He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States in the Korean War and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea .

[68] [69] The art critic Kirsten Hoving Keen says that it is "inspired by reports of American atrocities" and considers it one of Picasso's communist works. [70] Style and technique[ edit ] 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. [71] The medium in which Picasso made his most important contribution was painting. [72] In his paintings, Picasso used color as an expressive element, but relied on drawing rather than subtleties of color to create form and space. [72] 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. [73] 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. [72] 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". [74] From the beginning of his career, Picasso displayed an interest in subject matter of every kind, [75] 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.

[76] 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. [77] 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. [76] 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." [78] 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". [78] 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." [78] Artistic legacy[ edit ] 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. [79] 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. [80] 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. [81] 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. [82] [83] As of 2004, Picasso remained the top-ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report.

[84] More of his paintings have been stolen than any other artist's; [85] the Art Loss Register has 550 of his works listed as missing. [86] The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The US copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the Artists Rights Society . [87] In the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso , Picasso is portrayed by actor Anthony Hopkins . [88] Picasso is also a character in Steve Martin 's 1993 play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile . In " A Moveable Feast " by Ernest Hemingway , Hemingway tells Gertrude Stein that he would like to have some Picassos, but cannot afford them. Later in the book, Hemingway mentions looking at one of Picasso's paintings. He refers to it as Picasso's nude of the girl with the basket of flowers. Presumably, he is talking about "Young Naked Girl with Flower Basket". Recent major exhibitions[ edit ] 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:

Question: Which artist had a 'Blue Period' from 1901 to 1904 and a 'Rose Period' from 1904 to 1906?
Answer: PICASSO