Picasso's Blue Period example essay topic

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 caf'e 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 portraits (Gertrude Stein 1906) This formed his crucial shift from what he saw, to what he was thinking. His first cubist painting Les Demoiselles d' Avignon produced in 1907, was the shaker of the art world. Although, he was a little scared of his painting and showing it, that he didn't show it until 1916. Picasso and George Braque a close friend of his, then created the style of Cubism in tandem together and Cubism then became the dominant style of at least the first half of the 20th Century.

Picasso started this period of Cubism at the age of 26 and his works took on a cube shaped abstract figure. In 1912 Picasso produced 'Still- life with Chair Caning', which is an oval picture that is in effect, a caf'e table in prospective surrounded by a rope frame. It was the first collage, or a work of art that incorporated pre-existing materials or objects as part of the ensemble. Elements glued to the surface contrasting with painted versions of the same material provided a sort of sophisticated double take on the part of the observer, 'The Guitar' 1913. This period of cubism lasted until 1915. Picasso also brought controversy to the art world whilst he lived in Paris during World War I and the Spanish Civil War, as he produced gloomy paintings in semi abstract styles, many depicting skulls.

He painted them to show how stupid he thought the war was. Some of them were huge like "GuemicEC' (twelve feet high and twenty-five feet wide) that he named after the town he lived in during the war. In his last years he pre-occupied himself with a series of mistresses and girlfriends, which changed his style once again to express his love for each one. Picasso's career is in fact a patchwork of different styles and in saying so it was said that whatever Picasso had a hand in, turned out to have an unquenchable spark of utter genius. At the age of 92 years, Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973.