Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor,
printmaker
Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...
,
ceramicist and
theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the
Cubist movement, the invention of
constructed sculpture,
the co-invention of
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
, 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 the anti-war painting ''
Guernica'' (1937),
a dramatic portrayal of the
bombing of Guernica
On 26 April 1937, the Basque town of Guernica (''Gernika'' in Basque) was aerial bombed during the Spanish Civil War. It was carried out at the behest of Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalist faction by its allies, the Nazi German Luftwaffe's ...
by German and Italian air forces during the
Spanish Civil War.
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. After 1906, the
Fauvist work of the slightly older artist
Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.
Picasso's 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 Blue Period may refer to:
*Picasso's Blue Period
The Blue Period ( es, Período Azul) is a term used to define the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904 when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades ...
(1901–1904), the
Rose Period
Picasso's Rose Period represents an important epoch in the life and work of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso which had a great impact on the developments of modern art. It began in 1904 at a time when Picasso settled in Montmartre at the Bateau-La ...
(1904–1906), the
African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
(1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the
Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a
neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.
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
Twentieth-century art—and what it became as modern art—began with modernism in the late nineteenth century.
Overview
Nineteenth-century movements of Post-Impressionism ( Les Nabis), Art Nouveau and Symbolism led to the first twentieth-century ...
.
Early life
Picasso was born at 23:15 on 25 October 1881, in the city of
Málaga
Málaga (, ) is a municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia after Seville and the sixth most pop ...
,
Andalusia, in southern Spain.
He was the first child of
Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López.
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's birth certificate and the record of his baptism include very long names, combining those of various saints and relatives. ''Ruiz y Picasso'' were his paternal and maternal surnames, respectively, per Spanish custom. The surname "Picasso" comes from
Liguria, a coastal region of north-western Italy; its capital is
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Regions of Italy, Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of t ...
.
There was a painter from the area named (1794–1879), born in
Recco (Genoa), of late
neoclassical style portraiture,
though investigations have not definitively determined his kinship with the branch of ancestors related to Pablo Picasso. The direct branch from
Sori, Liguria (Genoa), can be traced back to Tommaso Picasso (1728–1813). His son Giovanni Battista, married to Isabella Musante, was Pablo's great-great-grandfather. Of this marriage was born Tommaso (Sori, 1787–Málaga, 1851). Pablo's maternal great-grandfather, Tommaso Picasso moved to Spain around 1807.
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".
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.
The family moved to
A Coruña
A Coruña (; es, La Coruña ; historical English: Corunna or The Groyne) is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. A Coruña is the most populated city in Galicia and the second most populated municipality in the autonomous community and ...
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,
though paintings by him exist from later years.
In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of
diphtheria.
After her death, the family moved to
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ...
, 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.
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. As a student, Picasso 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.
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
Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name '' Franciscus''.
Nicknames
In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed " Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father o ...
. Picasso especially admired the works of
El Greco; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colours, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso's later work.
Career
Before 1900
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
The Museu Picasso (, "Picasso Museum") is an art museum in Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. It houses an extensive collection of artworks by the twentieth-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, with a total of 4251 of his works. It is housed ...
in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist's beginnings.
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.
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."
In 1897, his realism began to show a
Symbolist
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
influence, for example, 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
Edvard Munch ( , ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His best known work, '' The Scream'' (1893), has become one of Western art's most iconic images.
His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the d ...
, combined with his admiration for favourite old masters such as
El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.
Picasso made his first trip to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
, 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''.
From 1898 he signed his works as "Pablo Ruiz Picasso", then as "Pablo R. Picasso" until 1901. The change does not seem to imply a rejection of the father figure. Rather, he wanted to distinguish himself from others; initiated by his Catalan friends who habitually called him by his maternal surname, much less current than the paternal Ruiz.
Blue Period: 1901–1904
Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by sombre paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green only occasionally warmed by other colours, began either in Spain in early 1901 or in Paris in the second half of the year.
Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ...
and Paris. In his austere use of colour 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
Carles 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
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egypt ...
.
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, a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, is also represented in ''The Blindman's Meal'' (1903, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...
) and in the portrait of ''Celestina'' (1903). Other Blue Period works include ''Portrait of Soler'' and ''
Portrait of Suzanne Bloch''.
Rose Period: 1904–1906
The Rose Period (1904–1906)
is characterised by a lighter tone and style utilising orange and pink colours 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
Fernande Olivier (born Amélie Lang; 6 June 1881 – 29 January 1966) was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Pic ...
, a
bohemian artist who became his mistress, in Paris in 1904.
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.
By 1905, Picasso became a favourite of American art collectors
Leo
Leo or Léo may refer to:
Acronyms
* Law enforcement officer
* Law enforcement organisation
* ''Louisville Eccentric Observer'', a free weekly newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky
* Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity
Arts an ...
and
Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted a
portrait of Gertrude Stein and one of 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.
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's and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy. Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse, while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picassos.
In 1907, Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 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
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
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.
African art and primitivism: 1907–1909
Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with his painting ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon''. The three figures on the left were inspired by
Iberian sculpture, but he repainted the faces of the two figures on the right after being powerfully impressed by African artefacts he saw in June 1907 in the ethnographic museum at
Palais du Trocadéro.
When he displayed the painting to acquaintances in his studio later that year, the nearly universal reaction was shock and revulsion; Matisse angrily dismissed the work as a hoax.
Picasso did not exhibit ''Les Demoiselles'' publicly until 1916.
Other works from this period include ''Nude with Raised Arms'' (1907) and ''Three Women'' (1908). Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Analytic cubism: 1909–1912
Analytic
cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with
Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities.
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. In 1911, Picasso was arrested and questioned about
the theft of the ''Mona Lisa'' from the
Louvre. Suspicion for the crime had initially fallen upon Apollinaire due to his links to Géry Pieret, an artist with a history of thefts from the gallery. Apollinaire in turn implicated his close friend Picasso, who had also purchased stolen artworks from the artist in the past. Afraid of a conviction that could result in his deportation to Spain, Picasso denied having ever met Apollinaire. Both were later cleared of any involvement in the painting's disappearance.
Synthetic cubism: 1912–1919
Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre of cubism, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
in fine art.
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".
"We need a new name to designate them," wrote Picasso to
Gertrude Stein. The term "
Crystal Cubism" was later used as a result of visual analogies with crystals at the time.
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.
After acquiring some fame and fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom 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.
At the outbreak of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
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
Léonce Rosenberg (12 September 1879 in Paris – 31 July 1947 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was an art collector, writer, publisher, and one of the most influential French art dealers of the 20th century. His greatest impact was as a supporter and promote ...
. 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.
Towards the end of World War I, Picasso became involved 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
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, float (parade), floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually ce ...
'', 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 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
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
.
Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and other dimensions of the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo Picasso,
who would grow up to be a 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.
File:Pablo Picasso, 1909, Femme assise (Sitzende Frau), oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie.jpg, 1909, ''Femme assise (Sitzende Frau)'', oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm (39 x 31 in), Staatliche Museen, Neue Nationalgalerie
The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its ...
, Berlin
File:Pablo Picasso, 1909-10, Figure dans un Fauteuil (Seated Nude, Femme nue assise), oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73 cm, Tate Modern, London.jpg, 1909–10, ''Figure dans un Fauteuil (Seated Nude, Femme nue assise)'', oil on canvas, 92.1 × 73 cm (36 x 28 in), 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
File:Pablo Picasso, 1910, Woman with Mustard Pot (La Femme au pot de moutarde), oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Exhibited at the Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston 1913.jpg, 1910, ''Woman with Mustard Pot (La Femme au pot de moutarde)'', oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm (28 x 23 in), Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Exhibited at the Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston 1913
File:Pablo Picasso, 1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas, 100.3 x 73.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art New York..jpg, 1910, '' Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier)'', oil on canvas, 100.3 × 73.6 cm (39 x 28 in), Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
, New York
File:Picasso Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler 1910.jpg, 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?"
File:Pablo Picasso, 1910-11, Guitariste, La mandoliniste, Woman playing guitar, oil on canvas.jpg, 1910–11, ''Guitariste, La mandoliniste (Woman playing guitar or mandolin)'', oil on canvas
File:Pablo Picasso, c.1911, Le Guitariste.jpg, c.1911, ''Le Guitariste''. Reproduced in Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, '' Du "Cubisme"'', 1912
File:Pablo Picasso, 1911, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, oil on canvas, 61.3 x 50.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.jpg, 1911, ''Still Life with a Bottle of Rum'', oil on canvas, 61.3 × 50.5 cm (24 x 19 in), Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...
, New York
File:Pablo Picasso, 1911, The Poet (Le poète), Céret, oil on linen, 131.2 × 89.5 cm, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.jpg, 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
File:Pablo Picasso, 1911-12, Violon (Violin), oil on canvas, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.jpg, 1911–12, ''Violon (Violin)'', oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm (39 x 28 in) (oval), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. This painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921
File:Pablo Picasso, 1913, Bouteille, clarinette, violon, journal, verre.jpg, 1913, ''Bouteille, clarinet, violon, journal, verre'', 55 × 45 cm (21 x 17 in). This painting from the collection of Wilhelm Uhde was confiscated by the French state and sold at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921
File:Pablo Picasso, 1913-14, Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair, oil on canvas, 149.9 x 99.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg, 1913, ''Femme assise dans un fauteuil (Eva), Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair'', oil on canvas, 149.9 × 99.4 cm (59 x 39 in), Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...
File:Pablo Picasso, 1913-14, Head (Tête), cut and pasted colored paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 x 33 cm, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.jpg, 1913–14, ''Head (Tête)'', cut and pasted coloured paper, gouache and charcoal on paperboard, 43.5 × 33 cm (17 x 12.9 in), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
File:Pablo Picasso, 1913-14, L'Homme aux cartes (Card Player), oil on canvas, 108 x 89.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg, 1913–14, ''L'Homme aux cartes (Card Player)'', oil on canvas, 108 × 89.5 cm (42 x 35 in), Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
, New York
File:Pablo Picasso, 1914-15, Nature morte au compotier (Still Life with Compote and Glass), oil on canvas, 63.5 x 78.7 cm (25 x 31 in), Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.jpg, 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
File:Pablo Picasso, 1916, L'anis del mono (Bottle of Anis del Mono) oil on canvas, 46 x 54.6 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan.jpg, 1916, ''L'anis del mono (Bottle of Anis del Mono)'', oil on canvas, 46 × 54.6 cm (18 x 21 in), Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
File:Parade Picasso.jpg, ''Parade'', 1917, curtain designed for the ballet ''Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, float (parade), floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually ce ...
''. The work is the largest of Picasso's paintings. Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France, May 2012
Neoclassicism and surrealism: 1919–1929
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
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual ...
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.
File:Pablo Picasso, 1918, Pierrot, oil on canvas, 92.7 x 73 cm, Museum of Modern Art.jpg, Pablo Picasso, 1918, ''Pierrot'', oil on canvas, 92.7 × 73 cm, Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
, New York
File:Pablo Picasso, 1917-18, Portrait d'Olga dans un fauteuil (Olga in an Armchair), oil on canvas, 130 x 88.8 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris, France.jpg, Pablo Picasso, 1918, ''Portrait d'Olga dans un fauteuil (Olga in an Armchair)'', Musée Picasso
:''This article refers to the museum in Paris. There are a number of other Picasso museums.''
The Musée Picasso ( en, Picasso Museum) is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé ( en, Salé Hall) in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district ...
, Paris, France
File:Pablo Picasso, 1919, Sleeping Peasants, gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, 31.1 x 48.9 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York.jpg, Pablo Picasso, 1919, ''Sleeping Peasants'', gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, 31.1 × 48.9 cm, Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
The Great Depression to MoMA exhibition: 1930–1939
During the 1930s, the
minotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur ( , ;. grc, ; in Latin as ''Minotaurus'' ) is a mythical creature portrayed during classical antiquity with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, a being "pa ...
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.
Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his depiction of the German
bombing of Guernica
On 26 April 1937, the Basque town of Guernica (''Gernika'' in Basque) was aerial bombed during the Spanish Civil War. It was carried out at the behest of Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalist faction by its allies, the Nazi German Luftwaffe's ...
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 exhibited in July 1937 at the Spanish Pavilion at the
Paris International Exposition
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, and then became the centerpiece of an exhibition of 118 works by Picasso,
Matisse,
Braque and
Henri Laurens that toured Scandinavia and England. After the victory of Francisco Franco in Spain, the painting was sent to the United States to raise funds and support for Spanish refugees. Until 1981 it was entrusted to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, as it was Picasso's expressed desire that the painting should not be delivered to Spain until liberty and democracy had been established in the country.
In 1939 and 1940, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting 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 Picasso, 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.
According to Jonathan Weinberg, "Given the extraordinary quality of the show and Picasso's enormous prestige, generally heightened by the political impact of ''Guernica'' ... the critics were surprisingly ambivalent".
Picasso's "multiplicity of styles" was disturbing to one journalist; another described him as "wayward and even malicious";
Alfred Frankenstein's review in ''
ARTnews'' concluded that Picasso was both charlatan and genius.
World War II and late 1940s: 1939–1949
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, 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
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one or ...
. 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."
Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint, producing works such as the ''Still Life with Guitar'' (1942) and ''
The Charnel House
''The Charnel House'' (French: ''Le Charnier'') is a 1944–1945 oil and charcoal on canvas painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, which is purported to deal with the Nazi genocide of the Holocaust. The black and white 'grisaille' compositi ...
'' (1944–48).
Although the Germans outlawed
bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
.
Around this time,
Picasso wrote poetry 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).
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 Picasso, born in 1947 and
Paloma Picasso, born in 1949. In her 1964 book ''Life with Picasso'',
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 Genevieve Laporte (1926 – 30 March 2012) was a French philanthropist, documentary filmmaker, artists' model, poet and author of sixteen books. She is known for being one of Pablo Picasso's last lovers during the 1950s. In 1951 they began an ...
, 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
Vallauris (; oc, Valàuria) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. It is located in the metropolitan area, and is today effectively an extension of the town of Antibes, ...
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.
By this time, Picasso had constructed a huge
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
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.
Later works to final years: 1949–1973
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the
3rd Sculpture International held at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...
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.
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'' (1960). In 1955, he helped make the film ''Le Mystère Picasso'' (''
The Mystery of Picasso'') directed by
Henri-Georges Clouzot.
He was commissioned to make a
maquette for a huge -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 colourful 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 the late works of Picasso as prefiguring
Neo-Expressionism.
Death
Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in
Mougins, France, from
pulmonary edema and
heart failure, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He was interred at the
Château of Vauvenargues near
Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label=Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...
, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.
Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.
Political views
Picasso remained aloof from the
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid ...
independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. He did not join the armed forces for any side or country during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, the
Spanish Civil War, or World War II. 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.
At the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Picasso was 54 years of age. Soon after hostilities began, the Republicans appointed him "director of the Prado, albeit in absentia", and "he took his duties very seriously", according to John Richardson, supplying the funds to evacuate the museum's collection to Geneva.
The war provided the impetus for Picasso's first overtly
political work. He expressed anger and condemnation of
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 19 ...
and fascists in ''
The Dream and Lie of Franco
''The Dream and Lie of Franco'' is a series of two sheets of prints, comprising 18 individual images, and an accompanying prose poem, by Pablo Picasso produced in 1937. The sheets each contain nine images arranged in a 3x3 grid. The first 14, in ...
'' (1937), which was produced "specifically for propagandistic and fundraising purposes".
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.
In 1944, Picasso joined the
French Communist Party. He attended the 1948
World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Poland, and in 1950 received the
Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government.
Party criticism in 1953 of his 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.
His dealer,
D-H. Kahnweiler, a socialist, termed Picasso's communism "sentimental" rather than political, saying "He has never read a line of Karl Marx, nor of Engels of course."
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."
His commitment to communism, common among
continental intellectuals and artists at the time, has long been the subject of some controversy; a notable demonstration thereof was a quote by
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
(with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship
):
: ''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.)
In the late 1940s, his old friend the surrealist poet,
Trotskyist,
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."
As a communist, Picasso opposed the intervention of the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...
and the United States in the
Korean War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Korean War
, partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict
, image = Korean War Montage 2.png
, image_size = 300px
, caption = Clockwise from top: ...
, and depicted it in ''
Massacre in Korea
''Massacre in Korea'' (French: ''Massacre en Corée'') is an expressionistic painting completed on 18 January 1951 by Pablo Picasso. It is Picasso's third anti-war painting and depicts a scene of a massacre of a group of naked women and children b ...
''.
The art critic Kirsten Hoving Keen wrote that it was "inspired by reports of American atrocities" and considered it one of Picasso's communist works.
On 9 January 1949, Picasso created ''
Dove'', a black and white lithograph. It was used to illustrate a poster at the 1949
World Peace Council and became an iconographic image of the period, known as "The dove of peace". Picasso's image was used around the world as a symbol of the Peace Congresses and communism.
In 1962, he received the
Lenin Peace Prize.
Biographer and art critic
John Berger felt his talents as an artist were "wasted" by the communists.
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."
Style and technique
Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. At his death there were more than 45,000 unsold works in his estate, comprising 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 3,222 ceramics, 7,089 drawings, 150 sketchbooks, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. The most complete – but not exhaustive – catalogue of his works, the
catalogue raisonné compiled by
Christian Zervos Christian Zervos ( el, Χρήστος Ζερβός; Argostoli, Cefalonia, Greece, January 1, 1889 – September 12, 1970, Paris) was a Greek-French art historian, critic, collector, writer and publisher.
Better known as an art critic in his own ri ...
, lists more than 16,000 paintings and drawings. Picasso's output was several times more prolific than most artists of his era; by at least one account, American artist
Bob Ross is the only one to rival Picasso's volume, and Ross's artwork was designed specifically to be easily mass-produced quickly.
The medium in which Picasso made his most important contribution was painting.
In his paintings, Picasso used colour as an expressive element, but relied on drawing rather than subtleties of colour to create form and space.
He sometimes added sand to his paint to vary its texture. A
nanoprobe of Picasso's ''The Red Armchair'' (1931), in the collection of the
Art Institute of Chicago, by physicists at
Argonne National Laboratory in 2012 confirmed art historians' belief that Picasso used common house paint in many of his paintings. Much of his painting was done at night by artificial light.
Picasso's early sculptures were carved from wood or modelled in wax or clay, but from 1909 to 1928 Picasso abandoned modelling and instead made sculptural constructions using diverse materials.
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".
From the beginning of his career, Picasso displayed an interest in subject matter of every kind,
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
The Museu Picasso (, "Picasso Museum") is an art museum in Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. It houses an extensive collection of artworks by the twentieth-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, with a total of 4251 of his works. It is housed ...
, 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.
In 1921 he simultaneously painted several large neoclassical paintings and two versions of the Cubist composition ''
Three Musicians
''Three Musicians'' is the title of two similar collage and oil paintings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. They were both completed in 1921 in Fontainebleau near Paris, France, and exemplify the Synthetic Cubist style; the flat planes of color ...
'' (Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art).
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."
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.
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.
Picasso painted mostly from imagination or memory. According to
William Rubin
William Stanley Rubin (August 11, 1927January 22, 2006) was an American art scholar, a distinguished curator, critic, collector, art historian and teacher of modern art.
From 1968 to 1988, Rubin was a curator at The Museum of Modern Art located ...
, 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."
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".
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."
Artistic legacy
Picasso's influence was and remains immense and widely acknowledged by his admirers and detractors alike. On the occasion of his 1939 retrospective at MoMA, ''Life'' magazine wrote: "During the 25 years he has dominated modern European art, his enemies say he has been a corrupting influence. With equal violence, his friends say he is the greatest artist alive."
Picasso was the first artist to receive a special honour exhibition at the Grand Gallery of the
Louvre Museum in Paris in celebration of his 90 years. In 1998,
Robert Hughes wrote of him: "To say that Pablo Picasso dominated Western art in the 20th century is, by now, the merest commonplace. ... No painter or sculptor, not even Michelangelo, had been as famous as this in his own lifetime. ... Though
Marcel Duchamp, that cunning old fox of conceptual irony, has certainly had more influence on nominally vanguard art over the past 30 years than Picasso, the Spaniard was the last great beneficiary of the belief that the language of painting and sculpture really mattered to people other than their devotees."
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
:''This article refers to the museum in Paris. There are a number of other Picasso museums.''
The Musée Picasso ( en, Picasso Museum) is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé ( en, Salé Hall) in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district ...
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
The Museu Picasso (, "Picasso Museum") is an art museum in Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. It houses an extensive collection of artworks by the twentieth-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, with a total of 4251 of his works. It is housed ...
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.
''Guernica'' was on display in New York's
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...
for many years. In 1981, it was returned to Spain and was on exhibit at the
Casón del Buen Retiro of the
Museo del Prado
The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...
. In 1992, the painting was put on display in the
Reina Sofía Museum
Reina (the Spanish word for queen) or La Reina may refer to:
Geography
* Reina, Badajoz, a municipality in the province of Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain
* Reina, Estonia, a village in Saaremaa Parish, Saare County, Estonia
* La Reina, a commune ...
when it opened.
It was announced on 22 September 2020 that the project for a new Picasso Museum due to open in
Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label=Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...
in 2021, in a former convent (Couvent des Prêcheurs), which would have held the largest collection of his paintings of any museum, had been scrapped due to the fact that Catherine Hutin-Blay,
Jacqueline Picasso
Jacqueline Picasso or Jacqueline Roque (24 February 1927 – 15 October 1986) was the muse and second wife of Pablo Picasso. Their marriage lasted 12 years until his death, during which time he created over 400 portraits of her, more than any of ...
's daughter, and the City Council had failed to reach an agreement.
In the 1996 movie ''
Surviving Picasso
''Surviving Picasso'' is a 1996 Merchant Ivory film directed by James Ivory and starring Anthony Hopkins as the famous painter Pablo Picasso. It was produced by Ismail Merchant and David L. Wolper. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay was loosely bas ...
'', Picasso is portrayed by actor
Anthony Hopkins.
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, possibly related to ''Young Naked Girl with Flower Basket''.
On 8 October 2010, ''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, opened at the
Seattle Art Museum,
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
, Washington, US. The exhibition subsequently travelled to the
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
Richmond, Virginia
(Thus do we reach the stars)
, image_map =
, mapsize = 250 px
, map_caption = Location within Virginia
, pushpin_map = Virginia#USA
, pushpin_label = Richmond
, pushpin_m ...
: the
M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California, US.;
the
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia;
and the
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
, Picasso remained the top-ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report.
More of his paintings have been stolen than any other artist's;
in 2012, the
Art Loss Register
Art Loss Register (ALR) is the world's largest database of stolen art. A computerized international database that captures information about lost and stolen art, antiques, and collectibles, the ALR is a London-based, independent, for-profit corpora ...
had 1,147 of his works listed as stolen.
The Picasso Administration functions as his official Estate. The US copyright representative for the Picasso Administration is the
Artists Rights Society.
Picasso is played by
Antonio Banderas in the
2018 season of ''
Genius'' which focuses on his life and art.
The Basel vote
In the 1940s, a Swiss insurance company based in
Basel
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS) ...
had bought two paintings by Picasso to diversify its investments and serve as a guarantee for the insured risks. Following an air disaster in 1967, the company had to pay out heavy reimbursements. The company decided to part with the two paintings, which were deposited in the
Kunstmuseum Basel. In 1968, a large number of Basel citizens called for a local referendum on the purchase of the Picassos by the
Canton of Basel-Stadt, which was successful, making it the first time in democratic history that the population of a city voted on the purchase of works of art for a public art museum. The paintings therefore remained in the museum in Basel. Informed of this, Picasso donated three paintings and a sketch to the city and its museum and was later made an honorary citizen by the city.
Auction history
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.
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.
On 11 May 2015 his painting ''Les Femmes d'Alger, 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.
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 ever paid at auction for a Cubist work.
On 17 May 2017, ''The Jerusalem Post'' in an article titled "Picasso Work Stolen By Nazis Sells for $45 Million at Auction" reported the sale of a portrait painted by Picasso, the 1939 ''Femme assise, robe bleu'', which was previously misappropriated during the early years of WWII. The painting has changed hands several times since its recovery, most recently through auction in May 2017 at Christie's in New York City.
In March 2018, his ''Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter), Femme au Béret et à la Robe Quadrillée'' (1937), a portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, sold for £49.8m at Sotheby's in London.
Personal life
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, Paul Joseph Picasso) – with
Olga Khokhlova
* Maya Widmaier-Picasso, Maya (5 September 1935 – 20. December 2022, Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) – with
Marie-Thérèse Walter
* Claude Picasso, Claude (born 15 May 1947, Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) – with
Françoise Gilot
* Paloma Picasso, Paloma (born 19 April 1949, 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''.
The women in Picasso's life played an important role in the emotional and erotic aspects of his creative expression, and the tumultuous nature of these relationships has been considered vital to his artistic process. Many of these women functioned as muses for him, and their inclusion in his extensive oeuvre granted them a place in art history. A largely recurring motif in his body of work is the female form. The variations in his relationships informed and collided with his progression of style throughout his career. For example, portraits created of his first wife, Olga, were rendered in a naturalistic style during his Neoclassicism, Neoclassical period. His relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter inspired many of his Surrealism, surrealist pieces, as well as what is referred to as his "Year of Wonders". Reappearance of acrobats theme in 1905 put an end to his "
Blue Period Blue Period may refer to:
*Picasso's Blue Period
The Blue Period ( es, Período Azul) is a term used to define the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904 when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades ...
" and transitioned into his "
Rose Period
Picasso's Rose Period represents an important epoch in the life and work of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso which had a great impact on the developments of modern art. It began in 1904 at a time when Picasso settled in Montmartre at the Bateau-La ...
". This transition has been incorrectly attributed to the presence of
Fernande Olivier
Fernande Olivier (born Amélie Lang; 6 June 1881 – 29 January 1966) was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Pic ...
in his life.
Picasso has been commonly characterised as a womaniser and a misogynist, being quoted as having said to one of his mistresses, Françoise Gilot, "Women are machines for suffering."
He later told her, "For me there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats." In her memoir, ''Picasso, My Grandfather'', Marina Picasso writes of his treatment of women, "He submitted them to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them, ingested them, and crushed them onto his canvas. After he had spent many nights extracting their essence, once they were bled dry, he would dispose of them."
Of the several important women in his life, two, Marie-Thèrése Walter, a mistress, and Jacqueline Roque, his second wife, died by suicide. Others, notably his first wife Olga Khokhlova, and his mistress Dora Maar, succumbed to nervous breakdowns. His son, Paulo, developed a fatal alcoholism due to depression. His grandson, Pablito, also died by suicide that same year by ingesting bleach when he was barred by
Jacqueline Roque from attending the artist's funeral.
Catalogue raisonné
Picasso entrusted
Christian Zervos Christian Zervos ( el, Χρήστος Ζερβός; Argostoli, Cefalonia, Greece, January 1, 1889 – September 12, 1970, Paris) was a Greek-French art historian, critic, collector, writer and publisher.
Better known as an art critic in his own ri ...
to constitute the
catalogue raisonné of his work (painted and drawn). The first volume of the catalogue, ''Works from 1895 to 1906'', published in 1932, entailed the financial ruin of Zervos, self-publishing under the name ''Cahiers d'art'', forcing him to sell part of his art collection at auction to avoid bankruptcy.
From 1932 to 1978, Zervos constituted the catalogue raisonné of the complete works of Picasso in the company of the artist who had become one of his friends in 1924. Following the death of Zervos, Mila Gagarin supervised the publication of 11 additional volumes from 1970 to 1978.
The 33 volumes cover the entire work from 1895 to 1972, with close to 16,000 black and white photographs, in accord with the will of the artist.
* 1932: tome I, ''Œuvres de 1895 à 1906''. Introduction p. XI–[XXXXIX], 185 pages, 384 reproductions
* 1942: tome II, vol.1, ''Œuvres de 1906 à 1912''. Introduction p. XI–[LV], 172 pages, 360 reproductions
* 1944: tome II, vol.2, ''Œuvres de 1912 à 1917''. Introduction p. IX–[LXX–VIII], 233 p. pp. 173 to 406, 604 reproductions
* 1949: tome III, ''Œuvres de 1917 à 1919''. Introduction p. IX–[XIII], 152 pages, 465 reproductions
* 1951: tome IV, ''Œuvres de 1920 à 1922''. Introduction p. VII–[XIV], 192 pages, 455 reproductions
* 1952: tome V, ''Œuvres de 1923 à 1925''. Introduction p. IX–[XIV], 188 pages, 466 reproductions
* 1954: tome VI, ''Supplément aux tomes I à V''. Sans introduction, 176 pages, 1481 reproductions
* 1955: tome VII, ''Œuvres de 1926 à 1932''. Introduction p. V–[VII], 184 pages, 424 reproductions
* 1978: ''Catalogue raisonné des œuvres de Pablo Picasso'', Paris, Éditions Cahiers d'art
Further publications by Zervos
* ''Picasso. Œuvres de 1920 à 1926'', Cahiers d'art, Paris
* ''Dessins de Picasso 1892–1948'', Paris, Éditions Cahiers d'art, 1949
* ''Picasso. Dessins (1892–1948)'', Hazan, 199 reproductions, 1949
See also
* Picasso's written works
* List of Picasso artworks 1889–1900
** List of Picasso artworks 1901–1910, 1901–1910
** List of Picasso artworks 1911–1920, 1911–1920
** List of Picasso artworks 1921–1930, 1921–1930
** List of Picasso artworks 1931–1940, 1931–1940
** List of Picasso artworks 1941–1950, 1941–1950
** List of Picasso artworks 1951–1960, 1951–1960
** List of Picasso artworks 1961–1970, 1961–1970
** List of Picasso artworks 1971–1973, 1971–1973
* Neoclassicism
Notes and references
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Gether, Christian, ed. (2019). ''Beloved by Picasso: The Power of the Model''. ARKEN Museum of Modern Art. 978-87-78751-34-8.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Nill, Raymond M. (1987). ''A Visual Guide to Pablo Picasso's Works''. New York: B&H Publishers.
*
*
*
*
Further reading
* Alexandra Schwartz, "Painted Love: The artist
Françoise Gilot was Picasso's lover, helpmate, and muse. Then she wanted more", ''The New Yorker'', 22 July 2019, pages 62–66. "[L]ives ''were'' trampled. Picasso died, at the age of ninety-one, in 1973. In 1977,
Marie-Thérèse Walter hanged herself; eight years later,
Jacqueline Roque, Gilot's successor and Picasso's second wife, shot herself in the head. Paulo, his son with Olga Khokhlova, Olga [Khokhlova], drank himself to death, in 1975, and Paulo's son, Pablito, killed himself by swallowing bleach when he was barred from attending his grandfather's funeral." (p. 66.)
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
Picassoat the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim Museum
Picassoat the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Picassoat
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...
(New York City, New York)
* (MoMA) (New York City, New York)
Musée National Picasso(Paris, France)
Museo Picasso Málaga(Málaga, Spain)
Museu Picasso(Barcelona, Spain)
at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC)
Picasso, L'Esprit nouveau: revue internationale d'esthétique, 1920 Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
W.H. Crain Costume and Scene Design Collectionat the Harry Ransom Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Picasso, Pablo
Pablo Picasso,
1881 births
1973 deaths
19th-century Spanish painters
19th-century Spanish male artists
20th-century ceramists
20th-century Spanish sculptors
20th-century Spanish painters
20th-century Spanish male artists
Ballet designers
Burials in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Child artists
Directors of the Museo del Prado
Former Roman Catholics
French Communist Party members
Lenin Peace Prize recipients
Modern painters
Painters of the Return to Order
People from Málaga
People of Montmartre
School of Paris
Spanish anti-fascists
Spanish atheists
Spanish communists
Spanish cubist artists
Spanish expatriates in France
Spanish male painters
Spanish muralists
Spanish people of Italian descent
Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War (Republican faction)
Spanish potters
Spanish male sculptors
Spanish surrealist artists
Political artists
French people of Spanish descent
Respiratory disease deaths in France
Deaths from pulmonary edema
Spanish Anti-Francoists