1881 : Pablo Picasso born
Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists
of the 20th century, is born in Malaga, Spain.
Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his
son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit
at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time
with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900,
and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue
Lafitte, a street known for its prestigious art galleries. The
precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative
unknown outside Barcelona, but he had already produced
hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in
Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to
settle permanently.
The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,000
paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, and ceramics
produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping
periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"--began shortly
after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist
(1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy
world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose
period," in which he often depicted circus scenes, and then by
Picasso's early work in sculpture. In 1907, Picasso painted the
groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with its
fragmented and distorted representation of the human form, broke
from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art
and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist
movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges
Braque in 1909.
In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and
synthetic, Picasso and Braque established the modern principle
that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major
Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for
Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three
Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments
also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques,
including collage.
After Cubism, Picasso explored classical and Mediterranean
themes, and images of violence and anguish increasingly
appeared in his work. In 1937, this trend culminated in the
masterpiece Guernica, a monumental work that evoked the
horror and suffering endured by the Basque town of Guernica
when it was destroyed by German war planes during the Spanish
Civil War. Picasso remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation
but was fervently opposed to fascism and after the war joined
the French Communist Party.
Picasso's work after World War II is less studied than his
earlier creations, but he continued to work feverishly and enjoyed
commercial and critical success. He produced fantastical works,
experimented with ceramics, and painted variations on the works
of other masters in the history of art. Known for his intense gaze
and domineering personality, he had a series of intense and
overlapping love affairs in his lifetime. He continued to produce
art with undiminished force until his death in 1973 at the age of 91.
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General Interest
1881 : Pablo Picasso born
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