Picasso And Cubism Essay Research Paper In

Picasso And Cubism Essay, Research Paper

In one blinding sweep, art as we know it changed – instead of making things look like they look, artists took it upon themselves to show things as they are, not how they look ( Koshevoy). Pablo Picasso was probably the most famous artist of the twentieth century. During his artistic career, he created thousands of works, not only paintings but also sculptures, prints, and ceramics, using all kinds of materials. Picasso was a man of many different abilities and attributes, which he contributed to the art community in numerous ways. Picasso had an extraordinary artistic ability, and the length of his career as an artist lasted more than seventy five years. His, productive, career left a lasting impact on the world. Famous for his pioneering role in cubism, Pablo Picasso s, work influenced art to such a degree that the art world never looked the same again.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso, son of Maria Picasso Lopez, and Jose Ruiz Blasco, was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. Picasso father, Jose, was an artist and a teacher, who quickly recognized that his child was a prodigy ( Picasso ). Picasso first studied art privately with his father. Picasso s early drawings demonstrated the high level of technical proficiency he had achieved by the age of 14 ( Picasso ). Then in 1891 his father was appointed a teaching job at the De Guarda art school in La Coru a, Barcelona. Picasso was admitted to the advanced classes at the academy after he completed, in a single day, the entrance examination the took applicants a month to finish. In 1897 Picasso left La Coru a, to study at the Madrid Academy in the Spanish capital. Dissatisfied with the training he quit and returned to Barcelona. In 1900 Picasso visited Paris, and moved back and forth between France and Spain until 1904, when he settled in the French capital. In 1913 his father died. Five years later, Picasso, met his wife Olga Koklova, and together they had a son named Paul. During this marriage. Picasso painted numerous mother-and-son paintings. In 1935 Picasso and Olga separated, and his daughter Maia is born to Miarie-Therese Walter. Together they lived at Boisegelop where he composed a number of poems. Picasso s mother, Maria Picasso Lopez, died in 1939 and Picasso returned to Paris. Picasso was a father to two more children, a son named Claude, born in in 1947, and a daughter named Paloma, born in 1949. October 25, 1971 was Picasso 90th birthday, he was commemorated with an exhibition in Granse Galerie of the Louvre, and on this day he became the first living artist to be honored. Only two years later on April 8th, Picasso died at his villa in Mougins, leaving the world with thousands of revolutionary works of art..

Pablo Ruiz Picasso, an article from Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, states:

From 1901 to 1903 Picasso initiated his first truly original style, which is known as the Blue Period. Restricting his color scheme to blue, Picasso depicted emaciated and forlorn figures whose body language and clothing bespeak the lowliness of their social status. In The Old Guitarist, Picasso emphasized the guitarist poverty and position as a social outcast, which he reinforced by surrounding the figure with a black outline, as if to cut him off his environment. . . . Picasso underscored the squalor of his figures during this period. ()

Neither the clothing nor the their environment conveyed a specific time or place. This suggests that Picasso intended to make a general statement about human life, rather than a statement about the lower class in Paris. Why blue dominated Picasso paintings during this period id sill unexplained. Possible influences may of been photographs with a blush tinge ( Picasso ), which were popular at the time, poetry that stresses blue in its imagery or the works of French artists who based their work around variations of a single color. Another explanation is that Picasso found color associated with melancholy ( Picasso ). Then in 1904 Picasso s style shifted to the rose period.

During the rose period, also referred to as the circus period, Picasso still focused on social outcastes, especially circus performers. This period lasted two years, form 1904-1905. During this period, his color scheme lightened, and changed significantly; featuring warmer, reddish hues, and the thick outlines of the blue period disappeared. The dog from the painting, Two Acrobats and a Dog, was present frequently in Picasso s work, and may have been a reference to death; as dogs appear at the feet of figures in many Spanish funeral monuments. Picasso may have felt an especially deep sympathy for circus performers. Like artists, they were paid to entertain society, but their itinerant lifestyle and status as outsiders prevented them from becoming an integral part of the social fabric ( Picasso ). Picasso himself was living in financial insecurity, and no doubt empathized with these performers. During this period Picasso met Fernande Olivier, the first of several women who shared his life and provided inspiration for his art. Olivier’s features appear in many of the female figures in his paintings over the next several years ( Picasso ).

Picasso’s paintings from late 1905 are more emotionally detached than those of the blue or rose periods. The color scheme lightens beiges and light browns predominate and melancholy and alienation give way to a mo