Pablo Picasso Biographical Essay
Uploaded by cracky on May 10, 2005
Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. As a young boy he attended Barcelona's School of Fine arts. By the age of 15 he was a well- rounded figurative painter. He was inspired early on by the capital of art, PARIS, which was where he soaked up the sketchy style of works by Manet, Gustave Courbet and Toulouse- Lautrec.
He spent from 1899 to 1904 moving forth and back between France and Spain as France gave him so much inspiration during his time spent there. In his life he went through many phases and styles including realism, caricature, but more significantly the Blue period (1901-1904) and Rose period (1904-1906).
At the age of 22 one of the most significant period of Picasso’s life had begun, the Blue period. This period saw the diminish in his choice of colour and range of tones, to a single dark and oppressive blue. He painted everything in blue as a sign of sadness from when his best friend died. And instead of Picasso observing people ruthlessly and satirically as he had done previously before this period, he now treated his models with sympathy and dejected tenderness. He no longer painted café scenes but began to imagine mysterious, withered figures standing rigid and silent against a vague or empty background. ‘Child with a Dove’, painted at the end of 1901, is the first of the series of canvases that comprise Picasso’s Blue period.
Right after the Blue period came the Rose period, which was another significant period in Picasso’s life from 1904- 1906. He started to paint in brighter colors such as pinks and beige, which dominated the paintings along with the less significant colours being light blues and roses. His subjects were saltimbanques, harlequins and clowns who are mute and inactive. Thus he drew people doing happy things along with lots of circus scenes with circus animals. (Family of Saltimbanques 1905)
In 1905 his work took a turn as they became of large male and female figures, seen frontally or in distinct profile, somewhat like Greek Art. (La Toilette 1906)
He was also captivated by the caricature like artworks of French Painter Henri Rousseau.
What paved the way for Picasso to become well known for his technique of cubism, was ancient Iberian sculpture from Spain, which was African art. He slowly incorporated simplified forms of the source into striking...