Pablo Picasso

Taylor Luchini
Katherine Hammond
Final Paper
12/12/12

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a very talented man. Not only was he an excellent painter, he was also a sculptor, print maker, ceramicist, and stage designer. Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, and was introduced to art at an early age due to the fact that his father was a painter. At age 16, he was sent to art school and by 1905 he was well known in the world of art. Picasso 's work is usually categorized into periods of time. The Blue Period, the Rose Period, and the Cubism Period are the three most popular. During each of these periods, Picasso changed up his technique and style of art.
“The Blue Period of Picasso is the period between 1900-1904 when he painted essentially monochromatic painting in shades of blue and blue-green” (McCully 17). Monochromatic means that he used different shades of the same color. In this case, he chose blue because he was depressed due to that fact his friend died. He was living in tremendously harsh conditions in Paris, France. According to Carsten Peter-Warncke, the author of Picasso, “His pictures, not merely melancholy but profoundly depressed and cheerless, inspired no affection in the public or in buyers. It was not poverty that led him to paint the impoverished outsiders of society, but rather the fact that he painted them that made him poor himself” (Warncke 31). He means that because of the fact that his paintings were so depressing, nobody felt the urge to purchase them. Because nobody was purchasing his paintings, he became more and more depressed; this was a rather unfortunate chain of events. On a different note, some positive did come out of this time period for Picasso. In 1903 he painted “The Old Guitarist” which was an oil painting of an older man with a guitar. He mixed modernism, impressionism, and symbolism to create this masterpiece.
After a couple years of depression Picasso began to cheer up. He started using more vibrant colors in his work such as pink and orange. This went on for two years from 1904-1906. During this period he used circus people in his paintings. Nobody really knows why, but they believe it was because he had sympathy for their hard work and little pay. Picasso 's highest selling painting, Garçon à la Pipe (Boy with a Pipe) was painted during the Rose Period. This piece is mainly impressionist meaning the artist used discontinuous strokes of color meant to reproduce the effect of light (World of Art 506). Another painting Picasso made during the Rose Period is called “The Actor”. It is an oil canvas painting of an acrobat posing in front of some sort of abstract background. According to John Richardson, a Picasso Biographer, “The Actor” was painted when Picasso was only 23. He was very poor, and these canvases were expensive. He explained that if Picasso made a mistake, he couldn’t afford to throw out the canvas, but rather painted over it. “Nearly all these early canvases have something painted underneath,” Mr. Richardson said (Vogel 1). That is a way to tell if your painting is authentic or not, some of these painting are worth well over ninety million dollars.
Another one of Picasso 's periods was the Cubism period. Unlike the previous, Picasso had a partner during this period. This style was pioneered by both Picasso and Georges Branque in the first decade of the twentieth century, it was noted for the geometry of its forms, its fragmentation of the object, and its increasing abstraction (World of Art 513). In Cubism, the artists takes and object and rearranges it in order to look abstract. In some instances you able to decipher what the image is and that is called Synthetic Cubism, and in others it is very hard to identify the subject matter, which is called Analytic Cubism. A popular painting of Picasso 's during this time was titled “Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon” (The Young Ladies of Avignon). It is an oil on canvas painting of five nude women, in a way resembling prostitutes. They 're bodies are somewhat ill-shaped but you can still make out the image. This painting would fall under Synthetic cubism simply because you can easily see the added texture and it is pretty easy to distinguish what Picasso was painting. An example of Analytic Cubism is Picasso 's "Ma Jolie" (My Pretty Girl). This is a painting of his lover, but the naked eye would say it looks like a bunch of triangles bunched together. If you look closely you can see characteristics of the girl, but it is very abstract.
Picasso will always be one of the best. Not only did he fight through poverty to accomplish what he did, he did it to an extreme. His thousands of masterpieces paved the way for many artists we see today. Art is truly amazing and it 's guys like Picasso who really make you appreciate it. He makes you realize you can make anything you want into some form of art, and you must never give up. Picasso said it best himself, “Everything you can imagine is real.”

Bibliography: McCully, Marilyn, Pablo Picasso, Nienke Bakker, Isabel Cendoya, Peter Read, and Michael Raeburn. Picasso in Paris 1900-1907. New York: Vendome, 2011. Print. Warncke, Carsten-Peter, Pablo Picasso, and Ingo F. Walther. Pablo Picasso: 1881-1973. Köln: Taschen, 1997. Print. Sayre, Henry M. A World of Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012. Print. Vogel, Carol. "Questions Over Fixing Torn Picasso." New York Times. N.p., 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

Bibliography: McCully, Marilyn, Pablo Picasso, Nienke Bakker, Isabel Cendoya, Peter Read, and Michael Raeburn. Picasso in Paris 1900-1907. New York: Vendome, 2011. Print. Warncke, Carsten-Peter, Pablo Picasso, and Ingo F. Walther. Pablo Picasso: 1881-1973. Köln: Taschen, 1997. Print. Sayre, Henry M. A World of Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012. Print. Vogel, Carol. "Questions Over Fixing Torn Picasso." New York Times. N.p., 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.