Art Periods

Early Works

Ignorant people often make remarks about avant-garde artists saying that they cannot paint and that is why they depict blocks and squares. Picasso can serve as an example to prove falseness and primitiveness of this statement. From a very young age he was able to portray a life model on paper with the highest resemblance. The talent lucky to be born into creative environment (the father of the brightest personality in the 20th century painting was a drawing teacher and decorator) developed in a flash. The boy had hardly learned to speak before he started drawing.... read & look more

"Blue" Period

This is, perhaps, the first period in the work of Picasso, in relation to which we can speak about the individuality of the creator, despite the still sounding notes of influence. The first creative uplift was provoked by a long-lasting depression: February 1901 in Madrid Picasso learned that his close friend Carlos Casagemas had died. May 5 1901 the artist visited Paris for the second time; everything reminded him about Casagemas, with whom he had discovered the French capital not so long ago. Pablo stayed in the room where Carlos had spent his last days, started an affair with Germaine, because of whom Carlos had committed suicide, and palled around with the same people. One can only imagine how hard it was for Picasso to cope with the anguish of bereavement, guilt and the imminence of death... It constituted the ground for the Blue period. Picasso later recalled: “I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas's death”.... read & look more

"Rose" Period

In Picasso’s work, the Rose Period was relatively short (from the fall 1904 until the end of 1906) and quite uneven. A large number of pictures were marked with a bright color; we see the advent of pearl gray, ocher, pink and red tones; there appeared new topics, such as actors, acrobats, athletes, and became dominant. The Cirque Medrano that was located at the foot of Montmartre hill certainly did provide a lot of material for the artist. Melodrama in its many manifestations (the suits, the accented gestures), a variety of different people, both beautiful and ugly, young and adult, returned the artist to the world of slightly transformed, but real forms, dimensions and spaces; paintings were once again filled with life as opposed to the characters of the Blue Period.... read & look more

"African" Period

The first work by Picasso, which turned him towards a new figurativeness, was the Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906. By repainting it 80 times, the artist was desperate to depict the writer in the classical style. The artist was ready for a new creative period and ceased to be interested in life models. This piece can be regarded as the first step towards shape deformation... read & look more

Cubism

Before Cubism, the lifelikeness was the major problem in the European art. Art had been evolving several centuries without bringing this concept into question. Even the impressionists, who started a new chapter in the history of painting devoted to light and fixation of fleeting impressions, were faced with the problem: how to capture the world on canvas ... read & look more

Classicism

Cubism gradually became Picasso’s internally lived experience and liberated his brush. He later said: “When I think about it, I’d say I’m an artist without style”. “Style puts constraints on the artist, forcing a single viewpoint on things upon him, the same techniques, the same formula, year after year, his life long”. This, of course, was not the case of Picasso, the desperate daredevil of art.... read & look more

Surrealism

The two factors triggered at the same time: Picasso’s new muse Marie-Therese Walter, whose “fascinating face” he desiderated to picture, immediately notifying his new female friend that “we will do great things together”, and the closeness to the circle of Andre Breton. It was in the gallery of Pierre in 1925 that Picasso first took part in a group exhibition of the Surrealists (before that, his works were presented at the personal exhibitions only). ... read & look more

War in Spain. Guernica. World War II

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Later works

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All works by years