PECULIAR PICASSO

For the whole month of January, we will concentrate our artistic efforts as we did last year, to create art from the different perspectives of four abstract artists. This week we will explore the life and art of Pablo Picasso and discover what inspired him to create his unusual body of work. 

PABLO PICASSO

The Father of Cubism

Pablo Picasso was born in Spain in 1881. His father was a Professor of Drawing and by age 10, Picasso's adeptness for drawing began to manifest so quickly that he surpassed his Father's artistic abilities. He was Dyslexic and it is thought that this disorder fueled his unique artistic vision, allowing him to see and represent objects differently leading to his fragmented multi-perspective Cubist style. He also likely had Strabismus, (Crossed Eyes) which affected his depth of perception but enabled him to better capture two-dimensional visual cues which suited his revolutionary art. His learning difficulties encouraged him to express himself visually through creativity and art. His father shifted his own ambitions to that of his son and provided him with models and support for his first exhibition at the age of 13. 

   Picasso with his sister, Ola

In 1897, Pablo and his family moved to Madrid where Pablo became a student at the Royal Academy at San Fernando. He found the teaching to be "stupid" and gave up their instructional teachings to find his inspiration in the streets, the brothels, and the cafes of the city. He discovered the style of Spanish Painting at the Prado Museum where works by Murillo and Goya would capture his imagination.

                                          Picasso, 1904

He fell ill in 1899 with Scarlet Fever and left Madrid to convalesce at a friend's home in Barcelona. It took nearly a year for Picasso to recuperate from this illness that significantly impacted his mental state and would later lead  to his Blue Period, which produced the somber monocratic reflecting his emotional struggles.

                                       The Blue Period

Picasso had his first successful Art Exhibition in Barcelona in 1900, but his circle of artist friends had their eyes on Paris. He was eager to see how his art would be accepted in Paris, so he joined them in their effort to conquer Paris or at least a little corner on the streets of Montmartre. Just after two months in Paris, he returned to Spain with his friend, Casagemas, who was despondent about a failed love affair. Picasso left his friend in Madrid to work as a art editor for   a new art journal, Art Joven. Casagemas went back to Paris and attempted to shoot the woman he loved but instead turned the gun on himself and died. Picasso was very distraught at having lost his closest friend and felt a huge amount of remorse and guilt from what he felt as abandoning his friend to work at the Art Joven. 

The loss of his loyal friend deeply impacted Picasso and led him to his Blue Period where he painted two death portraits of Casagemas and also incorporated his grief into many other works of art.

Death Mask of Casagemas

Picasso moved permanently to Paris in 1904, where he gained much inspiration from the Traveling Circus and Saltimbanques, (acrobats and performers of the Circus). He became romantically involved with Fernande Oliver and  over the years, she inspired many of his works and was the subject of his painting, Woman With Leaves.

Woman With Leaves

Believe it or not, color never came easy to Picasso. He always reverted back to the Spanish monochromatic palette that he used as a child. The colors of the Blue Period were replaced by those of pottery, of flesh and the earth itself, which he called his Rose Period.  This led to one of his most famous paintings, Les Demoiselles in d'Avignon, (1907). His violent treatment of the female body and the masklike faces, inspired by his study of African art, made that work very controversial. Avignon was the name of a street in Barcelona where sailors frequented their favorite brothels. The painting was perceived as shocking and a direct assault of the beauty of a woman, as it conveyed very unconventional images of a women's body. Picasso rolled up the canvas and kept it out of sight for many years.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

The Rose Period

As I have discovered in the lives of most artists, none were untouched by human fragility, physical and mental challenges, controversy, and public scandal.  Picasso's life was no different. While living in Paris in 1911, he was arrested and questioned for the theft of the Mona Lisa. Suspicion for the crime fell on his association with his poet friend, Guilliaume Apollonaire, due to his links with Gery Pieret, a artist with a history of thefts from the gallery. Picasso had purchased several stolen paintings from Pieret in the past and afraid of a conviction, fled back to Spain. Picasso denied any association with Guilliaume and both were later cleared of any involvement in the paintings disappearance. This unfortunate incident combined with Picasso's return to Spain, would be the open door to Picasso's discovery of a whole new style of art. The genre of Cubism and the Art of Cubism Collage is the tearing of paper, newspaper, and wallpaper which is then pasted into compositions of art. Picasso's composition, Still Life with Chair Caning is said to be the first example and what we know today as Assemblage Art.

    Still Life With Chair Caning

From 1917 to 1929, Picasso took much of his inspiration from his travels in Italy and exhibited his work in the first Surrealist Exhibition in 1925. He developed new imagery in his style of painting to express himself emotionally, as it was said, "releasing the violence, the psychic fears and the eroticism that had been largely contained and sublimated in his work since 1909". Surrealism revived Picasso's attraction to primitivism and eroticism. 

In 1927, Picasso met 17 year old Marie-Therese Walter and bean a long standing affair with her. She became his "Golden Muse". He fathered a daughter with her named, Maya. Picasso loved younger women and after his affair with Mare-Therese he went on to have a relationship with the famous Surrealist photographer and painter Dora Marr, who influenced him greatly in the creation of his most famous work, Guernica.

                         Spanish Civil War-Guernica

Picasso had not used his work before as a voice to political aggression but Maar insisted that he should use his talent to be more politically creative. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality, and hopelessness of war. When asked to explain its symbolism, he 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 and as they understand them."

During WW11, Picasso remained in Paris during the German occupation of the city. Picasso's style did not fit the Nazi's idea of art and so while they were stealing other great works of art they left Picasso's work behind. Nevertheless, he was harassed by the Nazi's and once when they came to search his apartment, one officer saw a photograph of the painting, Guernica and asked, "Did you do that ?" to which he replied, "No....but you did"!

In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso, at the age of 63, had grown tired of Dora Maar and began a romantic relationship with a young art student, Francoise Gilot. She was 40 years younger than he was. They had two children, Claude and Paloma Picasso. Picasso went on to have many affairs with women of an age difference even greater than Gilot. In 1951, Picasso had an affair with Genevieve Laporte, who was 4 years younger than Gilot. By his 70's, many of his drawings and paintings depicted the theme as an old, grotesque dwarf as the doting lover of the beautiful young model. In 1952, Picasso met Jaqueline Rogue, who became his wife and remained with him to the rest of his life. he constructed a huge Gothic home and as a international celebrity, entertained many people who took as much interest in his life as they did in his art! 

Picasso also had a talent in writing and composed at least 300 poems and two plays. He painted 50,000 art pieces, 1,228 sculptures, and 12,000 drawings in his lifetime. Picasso passed away in 1973 at the age of 91.

                      Sculpture: A Glass of Absinthe

The enormous body of his work remains, and the legend lives on...a tribute to the vitality of the "disquieting" Spaniard with the "somber, piercing" eyes who superstitiously believed that work would keep him alive. For nearly 80 of his 90 years, he devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed significantly to and paralled the whxole development of modern art in the 20th century.

This interview of Picasso is in French which I could not translate! Our Parisian Friend Sim, could translate and tell us what he was saying!

Here are my Picasso Creations:

Digital art created from Conjurer of Dreams Picasso Set and Chez Simone Tresors Grunge Paper Pack