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Pablo Picasso was born Pablo Diego José Santiago
Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano de
los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso,
on October 25, 1881 in Malaga in Spain, and died April 8, 1973.
He’s considered as one of the true masters of 20th century
art. Picasso is probably best known for being one of the founders
of the artistic movement known as Cubism.
Although he often worked with small ceramics and bronze sculptures
and collages, Picasso believed that to be truly recognised as an
artist, one must be able to be paint. The Guinness Book of Records
names Picasso as the most prolific painter ever – In his
lifetime, he produced around 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and
engravings, 34,000 book illustrations and 300 sculptures.
Picasso’s artistic talent was so great he could work to
the same level of brilliance in oils, pastels, watercolours, charcoal,
pencil and in ink. Picasso was most famous for producing works
expressing complicated subjects with simplistic geometric shapes,
but he was also an excellent portrait artist.
Probably the most well known work by Picasso is his portrayal
of the German bombing of the town of Guernica in Spain during the
Civil War. The painting expresses the inhumanity, pointlessness
and brutality of war. When it was completed, Picasso stipulated
that it should not be hung in Spain until democracy returned to
the country. It hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art until
1981, when it was exhibited in Spain for the first time. In 1992 ‘ Guernica’ became
one of the main attractions in Madrid after it was shown in the
Reina Sofia Museum.
Pablo Picasso would often use a recurring character in his works – in
his early years as an artist, he would include a harlequin. The
clown like character would be painted in a chequered costume and
was most prevalent during Picasso’s infamous Rose and Blue
Periods.
During the 1930’s, the harlequin was seen to be replaced
with a Minotaur. It has thought that the Minotaur became Picasso’s
motif after he came into contact with the Surrealist movement,
who would often use a Minotaur as their symbol. The Minotaur also
makes an appearance in the Guernica work.
Picasso refused to fight for any side in the Spanish Civil War,
World War I and World War II and remained neutral during all of
them, and although a loyal communist, his interest in communist
policies cooled after his portrait of Stalin was criticised for
not being realistic enough.
Even up until his death, Picasso was constantly changing his
styles, and his final works are testament to this as he produced
a huge amount of paintings and engravings. The art world dismissed
many of these pieces as the work done by an artist past his best,
one long time admirer, Douglas Cooper, called them "the incoherent
scribblings of a frenetic old man". It was only after Picasso
had died, and the art world moved on from abstract expressionism,
the critics realised that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism
before them. As usual, Picasso was ahead of his time.
Many of Picasso’s early works can be found in the Museu
Picasso in Barcelona. The works range from his detailed figure
studies he did in his youth under his father’s tutelage,
to rare works produced towards the end of his life. All of which
show Picasso’s incredible artistic depth and talent.
Some
of Pablo Picasso’s famous works have been among the most
expensive paintings sold around the world – and in 2004, Picasso’s
Garçon à la Pipe sold at London’s Sotheby’s
auction house for US$104 million, thus becoming the most expensive
painting ever sold. |
