Pablo Picasso, one of the most dynamic and influential artist of our century, achieved success in drawing, printmaking, sculpture and as well in painting. He experimented with a number of different artistic styles during his long career.
Picasso was born in Malaga on the southern coast of Spain in 1881. He was exposed to art from a very young age. His a father, who was a painter and art instructor was his immediate mentor, he got very early in his life. After studying at various art schools between 1892 and 1896, including academics in Barcelona and Madrid, he went to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid during the winter of 1896-97. Picasso soon got bored with academics and set himself up as an independent artist.
In Barcelona in 1889 Picasso’s circle of friends included young artists and writers who travelled between Madrid, Barcelona and Paris. Picasso also visited these cities and absorbed the local culture. His early works were influenced by old masters such as El Greco and Velázquez and by modern artists including Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Picasso moved to Paris in 1904 and settled in Montmarte, a working class quarter. This area was home to many young artist writers. Although Picasso was greatly benefited from the artistic atmosphere in Paris and his circle of friends, he was often lonely, unhappy and terribly poor. During this period his sympathy for social outcast was reflected in his art and both his subject matter- including blind beggars and destitute families and in his melancholy blue colour schemes.
We can divide Picasso’s artistic life in different periods according to emotional and philosophical phases of his life. These phases usually were temporary but sometimes it seems that it has elongated for a large span of time.
Early period
Picasso was recognised as artistic prodigy at an early age. His works in this period illustrate his technical capability at that stage of his career. However, he was not satisfied with the limited possibilities in such a traditional mode of representation. His constant striving for new means of expression is the primary lesson of Picasso’s art.
The Blue period
Shortly after moving to Paris from Barcelona, he began to produce works that were suffused in blue. This particular pigment is effective in conveying a sombre tone. The psychological trigger for those depressing paintings was the suicide of Picasso’s friend Casagemas. The Blue period is quite sentimental, but we must keep in mind that Picasso was still in his late teens, away from home for the first time and living in a very poor conditions.
The Rose period
In 1905-06, Picasso’s palette began to lighten considerably, bringing in distinctive beige or “rose” tone. The subject matter is also less depressing. Paintings from the “Rose period” often show fairground performers in contemplative mood. Here are the first appearances of the circus performers and clowns that would populate Picasso’s painting at various stages throughout his long career.
The Beginnings of Cubism
In late 1906, Picasso started to paint in a truly revolutionary manner. Inspired by Cezanne’s flattened depiction of space and, working alongside his friend Georges Braque, he began to express space in strongly geometrical terms. These initial efforts at developing this almost sculptured sense of space in painting are the beginning of Cubism. The exhibition “The Early Years” traced his development from 1892-1906 just prior to the advent of Cubism.
Analytical Cubism
By 1910, Picasso and Braque had developed Cubism into an entirely new means of pictorial expression. In the initial stage known as Analytical Cubism, objects were deconstructed into their components. In some cases, this was a means to depict different viewpoints simultaneously; in other works it was used more as a method of visually laying out the Facts of the object, rather than providing a limited mimetic representation. The aim of Analytical cubism was to produce a conceptual image of an object, as opposed to a perceptual one.
Synthetic Cubism
In 1912, Picasso took the conceptual representation of Cubism to its logical conclusion by pasting an actual piece of oil cloth onto the canvas. This was a key watershed in Modern Art. By incorporating the real world into the canvas, Picasso and Braque opened up a century worth of exploration in the meaning of Art.
Between the wars
The collaboration between Picasso and Braque was ended by the First World War. After the war, Picasso, reflecting society’s disillusionment and shock with the technological horrors of the war, reverted to Classic mode of representation. At the same time, however he was continuing to push Cubism into new paths. During the 30s Picasso got connected with the Surrealist movement. Although Andre Breton tried to recruit Picasso, he remained ultimately aloof from any school of art throughout his career.
Picasso the legend
By the late ’30s, Picasso was the most famous artist in the world. He was called upon to depict the brutality of fascist aggression in Spanish Civil War with the monumental “Guernica”. Other paintings from this period reflect the horror of war, but there is a consistent depiction of personal interest. The women in Picasso’s had a major impact on his artistic production, and some of the best examples are from this period.
The Late Work
In the last two decades of his long career, Picasso produced more work than at any other time of his life. During this period, some works are not only dated by month and day, but by a numeral (I, II, III) indicating multiple work created that single day.
This late period tends to be overlooked, but contains some of the finest of Picasso’s paintings. Some critics maintain Picasso was creatively lazy at this point, but a close look at the work is very rewarding. He had achieved a level of effortless artistic expression that has still not been fully appreciated.
Regardless of our position on Picasso’s personal and artistic life each one of us can in view of own mortality be awed by his final self portrait
At the time of his death he had been possessing 50,000 works made by him in various media like paintings, ceramics, sculptures and papers. He was astonishing in inventing new ideas. The 80 year- time span of his life was devoted to art. Perhaps nobody else in history has got such a productive artistic life. Picasso died on April 8, 1973 in France. His works are now property of government of France. A museum on his name has been made in France where all of his works have been preserved.
Nayab
No comments:
Post a Comment