Life and Works of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso is noted by the majority of critics as the most important influence of twentieth century art (Picasso pp). Art critic Robert Hughes once stated, "To say that Pablo Picasso dominated Western art in the 20th century is, by now, the merest commonplace" (Picasso pp). Long before his fiftieth birthday, Picasso had become "the very prototype of the modern artist as public figure ... No painter before him had had a mass audience in his own lifetime" (Picasso pp). By the time of his death in 1973, he had created some 22,000 works of art in mediums that included sculpture, ceramics, mosaics, state design and graphic arts (Picasso pp). There is barely a movement during the twentieth century that Picasso did not inspire, contribute, or invent (Picasso pp).

Born Pablo Ruiz Picasso on October 25, 1881 in Malaga Spain, Picasso was a precocious draftsman and was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art in Barcelona at the age of fifteen to the academy's advanced classes (Picasso pp). Beginning in 1900, he spent most of his time in Paris and eventually moved there in 1904 where he remained until he moved to the South of France in 1947 (Picasso pp).

Picasso's creative production is often described as a series of overlapping periods (Picasso pp). During his "Blue Period," 1901-1904, he depicted the world of the poor and predominantly used tones of blue, creating a series of melancholy paintings, such as the 1903 "Old Guitarist," that are among the most popular art works of the twentieth century (Picasso pp). During his "Rose Period," 1905-1906, he used a "lighter palette and greater lyricism, with subject matter often drawn from circus life" (Picasso pp). The major avant-garde figures of this time, such as Matisse, Apollinaire, Braque, and Gertrude Stein, frequented Picasso's Parisian studio (Picasso pp). Having already produced numerous engravings of great power, it was during these years that he began his work in sculpture (Picasso pp).

Picasso's 1907 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, is considered the most important piece in the evolution toward cubism and modern abstraction (Picasso pp). This first phase of cubism, called analytic cubism, was conceived and developed by Picasso, Braque, and Gris during the years of 1909 through 1912 (Picasso pp). Other works by Picasso from this period include "Female Nude," 1910-1911, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and "Woman's Head," 1909, found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (Picasso pp).

After 1912 came the synthetic phase of cubism, when Picasso began using larger representational forms and "bright decorative patterns," as seen in his 1921 "The Three Musicians" (Picasso pp). Works from both periods of cubism resulted in a variety of new techniques such as collage and papier colle, and established that "art may exist as a significant object beyond any attempt to represent reality" (Picasso pp). Also during the 1920's, Picasso was greatly influenced by the classical themes and produced large impressive nudes and monsters that were suggestive of antiquity (Picasso pp).

Picasso's second landmark painting was "an impassioned allegorical condemnation of fascism and war," titled "Guernica," and was inspired by the 1937 bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica (Picasso pp). This painting was housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for many years, then in 1981 it was transferred to Spain's Prado, and finally in 1992 it was moved to the Queen Sofia Center of Art in Madrid (Picasso pp).

During his later years, Picasso began creating in themes of fantasy and worked "consistently in sculpture, ceramic, and in the graphic arts, producing thousands of superb drawings, illustrations, and stage designs (Picasso pp). Among his notable later works are "Rape of the Sabines," 1963, and "Young Bather with Sand Shovel," 1971 (Picasso pp).

Robert Hughes writes that Picasso was a "superstitious, sarcastic man, sometimes rotten to his children, often beastly to his women" (Hughes pp). He was known to have contempt for women artists, and his famous remark about women being "goddesses or doormats" left him offensive to feminists, yet "women tended to walk into both roles open-eyed and eagerly, for his charm was legendary" (Hughes pp).

Picasso once said, "All I have ever made was made for the present and in the hope that it will always remain in the present. When I have found something to express, I have done it without thinking of the past or the future" (Hughes pp). Picasso's work is based on "sensation and desire," aiming to make his audience "feel the weight of forms and the tension of their relationships mainly by drawing and tonal structure" (Hughes pp). Unlike Matissee or Pierre Bonnard, Picasso was never a great colorist, however, "through metaphor, he crammed layers of meaning together to produce flashes of revelation" (Hughes pp). Through this process he reversed modern art's rejected of storytelling and brought back formal relationships in a disguised form, "as a psychic narrative, told through metaphors, puns and equivalences" (Hughes pp)

After Cubism, perhaps the most powerful element of Picasso's work was sex (Hughes pp). After 1920, the female nude became his obsessive subject, as he imposed on them "a load of feeling, ranging from dreamy eroticism to a sardonic but frenzied hostility" (Hughes pp). Picasso accomplished this through "metamorphosis, recomposing the body as the shape of his fantasies of possession and of his sexual terrors" (Hughes pp). Concerning this process, Picasso said, "To displace, to put eyes between the legs, or sex organs on the face. To contradict. Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them! My painting is a series of cock-and-bull stories" (Hughes pp).