Print Bio
"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs."
-Pablo Picasso
Although born in Malaga, southern Spain, Picasso studied principally in Barcelona where he lived from 1895 to 1904. He showed prodigious artistic ability as a youth with very early works reflecting Art Nouveau influences. His paintings of 1901-1904 are known as his Blue period. These paintings of poor and suffering people such as 'Old Guitarist' (1903), depicted in restricted color and simplified forms, express intense melancholy and pathos. In 1904 his move to Paris resulted in a lighter mood and palette, with increasing emphasis on experimentation around primitive forms.
The epoch-making 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' (1907) was a conscious attempt to complete his researches and is now seen as the moment that Picasso relinquished his obligation to natural appearances. Inspired by the Negro art he first saw in this year, along with Georges Braque, Picasso created Cubism. His early paintings in this style, now known as Analytical Cubism, clearly show recognizable forms dissected and reconstructed using overlapping translucent planes. Objects, landscapes and people are represented as many faceted solids. 'Woman with a Guitar' is a clear example of this. Having moved through 'Hermetic Cubism' which saw flatter, more abstract pieces, produced in mainly monochromatic grays and browns, color reappeared in the final phase of Cubism known as 'Synthetic Cubism'. The impact of Cubism on the history of European painting and sculpture is immeasurable.
Between 1917 and 1924 Picasso worked on designs for many of Diaghilev's ballets which took him to Italy and led to a Classical feel entering his work. From 1925 his static figurative compositions became grotesque and violently active. This 'fantasy' period lasted until around 1940, with works such as the famous 'Guernica' (1936) revealing the latent expressive force of Picasso's work that had laid dormant during the Cubist years. Like many of the Surrealists, Picasso was disturbed and personally involved with the current political unrest in Europe and associated himself with the Spanish Republican cause.
Leaving Paris in 1946, he subsequently lived in Antibes, Vallauris and Vauvenargues. After Cubism, his major contribution to modern art is the freedom which characterizes every aspect of his painting, sculpture, ceramics and graphic work. Picasso remained a prolific artist until his death and was arguably the most versatile and influential artist of this century.
