Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

A painter and printmaker who revolutionized western art, Pablo Picasso was born in Spain and lived most of his life either there or in France. His father was an art teacher, and the young Pablo grew up in an artistic environment. By the age of fourteen, he was an accomplished draftsman, and in 1900 at age nineteen, he made his first trip to Paris. There he studied the Old Masters and Classical sculpture and also was exposed to the paintings of Impressionists and Post Impressionists. In 1908, Picasso began working in Paris with Georges Braque (1882-1963), and together until 1914, they created collages and the first phase of Cubism that included still life and portraits. They worked so closely together that many scholars are unable to tell some of their work apart or to determine which of them contributed certain concepts. Picasso went to Rome from 1914 to 1918 to do set designs and costumes for the Russian Ballet and during this time also did some realistic painting and drawing, and printmaking emerged as a major part of his art as a result of the time he spent drawing. His graphic art, which actually dated to 1905, was diverse as he was ever looking for new modes of expression, and he did etchings, drypoint, linocuts, woodcuts, aquatints and sometimes combinations. In the early part of the 1920s, he did abstract figurative work that was so grotesque in distortion that it set the stage for his participation in Surrealist exhibitions in Europe. Also the experimentation with figurative shapes led him to sculpture, an interest he had expressed earlier. The 1920s are regarded as one of the most productive periods of Picasso’s career. He did paintings with vivid coloration expressing his “. . .total experience of curvilinear cubism and classical idealism.” (Arnason, 393) In 1927, he began a relationship with seventeen-year-old Marie Therese Walther, and in 1936 with Dora Maar, a photographer. In 1937, inspired by the Spanish Civil War, he painted Guernica, which is regarded as one of his landmark paintings and certainly one that carried a strong message of human suffering during wartime. After the war, he began creating with ceramics, and he was very productive with printmaking. Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91. The last eight years of his life had been difficult because of physical problems, but he continued to be productive. Of him, it was written in Time magazine, May 26, 1980: “To the end . . . Picasso remained Picasso; an indefatigable worker, a lover of mischief and pranks, quirky, increasingly aloof, mercurial, yet often remarkably generous and warm.” Sources: H.H. Arnason, History of Modern Art, p. 125 Ingo F. Walther, Picasso, 1999, Cologne, Germany Time magazine, May 26, 1980 Alfred Barr, Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art http://www.artelino.com/articles/picasso.asp Archives of Phoenix Art Museum Docent Files: “Picasso”