Picaso

6 Pages 1568 Words

I INTRODUCTION Picasso, Pablo Ruiz y (1881-1973), Spanish
painter and sculptor, generally considered the greatest artist of the 20th
century. He was unique as an inventor of forms, as an innovator of styles and
techniques, as a master of various media, and as one of the most prolific artists in
history. He created more than 20,000 works.
II TRAINING AND EARLY WORK
Born in Málaga on October 25, 1881, Picasso was the son of José Ruiz Blasco, an
art teacher, and María Picasso y Lopez. Until 1898 he always used his father's
name, Ruiz, and his mother's maiden name, Picasso, to sign his pictures. After
about 1901 he dropped "Ruiz" and used his mother's maiden name to sign his
pictures. Picasso's genius manifested itself early: at the age of 10 he made his
first paintings, and at 15 he performed brilliantly on the entrance examinations to
Barcelona's School of Fine Arts. His large academic canvas Science and Charity
(1897, Picasso Museum, Barcelona), depicting a doctor, a nun, and a child at a sick
woman's bedside, won a gold medal.
III BLUE PERIOD
Between 1900 and 1902, Picasso made three trips to Paris, finally settling there
in 1904. He found the city's bohemian street life fascinating, and his pictures of
people in dance halls and cafés show how he assimilated the postimpressionism of
the French painter Paul Gauguin and the symbolist painters called the Nabis. The
themes of the French painters Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as
well as the style of the latter, exerted the strongest influence. Picasso's Blue
Room (1901, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.) reflects the work of both these
painters and, at the same time, shows his evolution toward the Blue Period, so
called because various shades of blue dominated his work for the next few years.
Expressing human misery, the paintings portray blind figures, beggars, alcoholics,
and prostitutes, their somewhat elongated bodies reminiscent of...