October 25, 1881, in Malaga, Spain, one of the most prolific twentieth- century artists is born into a family already inclined in his specialty, the arts. With an art and drawing teacher for a father, Pablo Picasso began showing his love as early as his early speech. Piz, Piz”, a shortened piece of the Spanish word for pencil (lapis), ironically happened to be his first spoken words according to his mother. After many early years under the direction of his father, young Picasso was admitted into the Royal Academy of Art in Barcelona’s advanced classes at age 15. It wasn’t much longer before Picasso’s power in art would be shown and appreciated.
Picasso’s work throughout his life portrays an evolution of styles and influences that are often seen as different periods. There are five most commonly accepted periods, but literally seven throughout the entirety of his life. With his ability being said to have really begun by age 13, his latest works continue as long as he lived as he devoted much of his energy to his art, especially in later life. His work in his later years wasn’t accepted much by the public at the time. It was not until a few years after his death and the end of abstract expressionism that we realized Picasso had already discovered Neo-expressionism. Proving, like so many times before, to be ahead of the critics and as innovative as any twentieth century artist.
The first period of his art timeline would be his works before 1901. Much of his early works can be found in Museu Picasso in Barcelona. The First Communion (1896), which illustrates his sister, shows the academic realism used in a lot of his mid 1890s works. Around 1897, influence of Symbolist met the already apparent realism. A series of landscape paintings showed evidence of this with the use of non naturalistic colors. Exposure to other styles and forms of art led to many works with a modernism feel just before 1901.
The Blue Period begins in 1901. It gets its name from the very frequent and overwhelming use of the color blue. The Old Guitarist is probably the best known of this time, but many depictions of very thin mothers with children are found in this period. A lot of the emotions tied to this period could be due to the suicide of his friend. Picasso also painted several portraits of his friend, Carlos Casagemos, that are now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Being blind also appears many times in this period of his work.
From 1904 to 1906, the Rose Period uses an abundance of warm colors and is often associated with being his happy or upbeat period. Acrobats and harlequins are often the subjects of his work during the Rose Period. His influence for this period appears to be meeting Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists. Involved in a warm relationship with her, he had much more exposure to French painting. Garcon a la pipe, Picasso’s highest selling painting to date going for over $100 million in 2006, was painted during his Rose Period.
From 1907 to 1909, Picasso had an African-influenced Period. The first signs of this period appear in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. This period is what led into his Cubism movement. He drew from African artifacts in much of his work during this time. He was likely introduced to these artifacts while in France by Henri Matisse. This was during the time the French were expanding into Africa and bringing back many times exaggerated stories of life and the people there, but also many artifacts and pieces of the culture from Africa came with these exotic tales.
Cubism began shortly after the African-influence and really made a way for modern abstract art. Cubism is distinctive for using monochrome colors, typically brownish, and the use of shapes as to analyze objects, as seen in Picasso’s Le guitariste (1910). This is used in painting and is Analytic cubism. Picasso developed the painting into Synthetic cubism by taking portions of surfaces or images and pasting them into compositions, like Picasso’s Still Life with Chair-caning (1911-1912) which uses pasted oil cloth. This is innovative in fine art because it was the first collage ever seen.
After WWI, Picasso had a neoclassical style. It was during this period that Guernica was produced. This was probably one of his most famous works. The symbolism is very strong in this period, but is left up to the viewer to understand for themselves. This period is the Classicism and Surrealism period.
The last period would just be one that consists of everything beyond the surrealism period until he died. One of the most remarkable would be what we know as Chicago Picasso, unveiled in 1967 and done for free for the city, in downtown Chicago. His works a year after the one in Chicago were what were later discovered to be neo-expressionism. Picasso painted until he could paint no more, and kept a lot of his own work to himself. He usually only sold what he had to. Leaving behind many brand new to the public works, he also left behind the legacy of an amazing artist.
