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ART IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Early Expressionism
Fauvism (1900-1910)
Cubism, Picasso (1881-1973)
Week 4
Early Expressionism
Munch: The Mind Cracking
Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter,
printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The
Scream, is part of a series , in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, and
melancholy. Many of his paintings, including The Scream, have universal appeal in addition to their highly
personal meaning.
Munch’s art was highly personalized and he did little teaching. His ―private‖ symbolism was far more
personal than that of other Symbolist painters. Nonetheless, Munch was highly influential. He was an
important inspiration particularly for German expressionist movement. His philosophy was:
―I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive (zorlayıcı) result of Man’s urge to open his heart.‖
↓
Expressionists followed his philosophy
From Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, Munch learned Paris and spent some time there, but his
most fertile period was between 1892- and 1908 when he was in Berlin. He was reactionary against
conventional behaviour.
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MOOD: Munch was always an outsider. He was always in a melancholic mood. He called his paintings
as his ―children.‖
Childhood: He had a traumatic childhood: his mother and eldest sister died of tuberculosis, when he
was young. His fanatically religious father raised Munch. Even as an adult, Munch was so afraid
of his father that he wanted his first nude painting to be covered by the exhibition organizers, so
that his father could not see it.
He was treated for depression at a sanatorium when he was young. There he realized that his
psychological problems were a catalyst for his art.
SPECIALITY: Munch was specialized in portraying extreme emotions, like jealousy, sexual desire, and
loneliness.
INFLUENCES: Early work: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist works of France and Art Nouveau
STYLE: Early work: violent brushstrokes, tormented (uhhappy) themes;
Late work: less moving brushstrokes, optimistic themes.
Munch was a forerunner of expressionism, a style that portrayed emotions through distorting form
and color.
“The Scream” an icon of
contemporary life:
•Depicts an agonized (ıstırap çeken)
figure against a blood red sky.
• Munch: “above the blue back fjord
hung the clouds red as blood, red
as tongues of fire.”
•Represents the intolarable fear of
losing one’s mind.
•Every line in the painting heaves with
agitation, setting up the turbulent of
rythms with no relief for the eye:
hypnosis of the spectator
•Today, it is a cliché for high anxiety,
but at the time it was exhibited, it
caused such an disturbance, so that
the exhibition was closed.
The Scream. 1893.
Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard.
Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.
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Although it is a highly unusual representation,
nevertheless, this painting is of Mary, the mother of
Jesus.
Madonna
Until the 20th century Mary was usually represented in
high art as a chaste (saf), mature woman.
True to the Norwegian cultural beliefs and way of life,
the painting is a strong dose of realism.
Ms. Sigrun Rafter, an art historian at the Oslo National
Gallery suggests that: Munch intended to represent
Mary in the life-making act of intercourse, with the
sanctity (kutsallık) and sensuality (şehvet) of the union
captured by Munch.
The usual golden halo of Mary has been replaced with
a red halo symbolizing the love and pain duality.
The viewers viewpoint is that of the man with her.
Even in this unusual pose, she embodies some of
the key elements of canonical representations of the
Virgin:

She has a quietness and a calm confidence about her.

Her eyes are closed, expressing modesty, but she is
simultaneously lit from above;

Her body is seen, in fact, twisting toward the light so as to
catch more of it, even while she does not face it with her
eyes.
These elements suggest aspects of conventional
representations of the Annunciation.

The Annunciation is, in Christianity, the revelation to Mary, the
mother of Jesus by the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child
to be born the Son of God.
Puberty, 1895;
Oil on canvas, 150 x 110 cm; Nasjonalgalleriet
(National Gallery), Oslo
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The Dance of Life, 1899-1900 ;
Oil on canvas; National Gallery, Oslo
After 1910, Munch returned
to Norway, where he lived
and painted until his death.
In his later paintings Munch
showed more interest in
nature, and his work
became more colorful and
less pessimistic.
Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed,
1940-42;
Oil on canvas, 149.5 x 120.5 cm; Munch
Museum, Oslo
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The Twentieth Century:
MODERN ART
Twentieth century art provided the
sharpest break with the past in the
whole evolution of Western Art.
• Twentieth century art took to an extreme what Courbet
and Manet began in the 19th century:
portraying contemporary life rather than
historical events.
• It declared all subjects as fair.
• It liberated form from traditional rules: as in Cubism.
• It freed color from accurately representing an object:
as in Fauvism.
• Modern artists confronted convention, tradition.
• They listened to Gauguin’s demand “a breaking of all the
old windows, even if we cut our fingers on the glass.”
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• At the core of this philosophy of rejecting the past called
Modernism, was a relentless quest for radical freedom
of expression.
• Released from the need to please a patron, the artist
stressed private concerns, experiences and
imagination as the sole source of art.
• Art gradually moved away from any pretense of
rendering nature toward pure abstraction, where
form, line and color dominate.
PARIS and NEW YORK:
THE INSPIRATIONS OF MODERN ART
• During the first half of the century, the school of Paris
reigned supreme. Whether or not artists of a particular trend
live in Paris, most movements emanated from France.
• Until World War II, the City of Light shined as the brightest
inspiration of modern art.
• Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism originated there.
• In the 1950s, the New York School of Abstract
Expressionism dethroned the School of Paris.
• The forefront of innovation shifted for the first time to the
United States, where Action painter jackson Pollock, as his
colleague Willem de Kooning said, “busted our idea of
picture all to hell.”
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WORLD HISTORY
ART HISTORY
1907
Brancusi carves first abstract sculpture
1908
Picasso and Braque found Cubism
1908-13
1911
Der Blaue Reiter formed
World War I declared
1914
1916
1917
1918
1920s
Armory Show shakes up American art
Dada begins
Mexican muralists active
U.S. Women win vote
1920
Soviets suppress Constructivism
Hitler writes Mein Kampf
1924
Surrealists issue manifesto
Lindbergh flies solo across Atlantic
1927
Fleming discovers penicillin
1928
1929
SURREALISM
Stock Market crashes
1930s
1933
Commercial television begins
1939
U.S: enters WWII
1941
First digital computer developed
1944
Hiroshima hit with atom bomb
1945
Mahatma Gandhi assasinated, Israel founded
1948
People’s Republic of China founded
1949
Oral Contraceptive invented
1950
1952
DNA structure discovered, Mt. Everest scaled
1953
Supreme Court outlaws segregation
1954
Salk invents polio vaccine
1955
Elvis sings rock’n roll
1956
Soviets launch Sputnik
1957
American scene painters popular, Social Realists paint political art
Gaudi starts building Casa Mila
Wright invents Prairie House
De Stijl founded
Bauhaus formed
Gropius builds Bauhaus in Dessau
Buckminister Fuller designs Dymaxian House
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy sets style for Modernism
Empire State Building opens
Pope’s National Gallery is last major Classical
building in U.S.
Dubuffet coins term “L’Art Brut”
ABSTRACT
EXPPRESSIONISM
FDR becomes President
CONSTRUCTIVISM
1913
EXPRESSIONISM
Kandinsky paints first abstract canvas
Henry Ford develops assembly line
Lenin leads Russian revolution
Ash Can painters introduced realism
1910
EARLY CUBISM
1906
HIGH CUBISM
Earthquake shakes San Francisco
Machintosh builds Hill HOuse
First Fauve exhibit, Die Brücke founded
LATE CUBISM
1905
FAUVISM
Einstein announces relativity theory
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY
FUTURISM
1903
PRECISIONISM
Wrights flight airplane
Abstract expressionism recognized
Harold Rosenberg coins term “Action Painting”
Wright builds Guggenheim
Fauvism (1900-1910)
•
•
•
Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century
Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the
representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.
While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted
only three years, 1905–1907, and had three exhibitions.
The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.
CHARACTERISTICS: The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by:
–
seemingly wild brush work
–
and harsh (haşin) colors,
–
a high degree of simplification and abstraction in their subject matter.
INFLUENCES: Fauvism can be classified as:
–
an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and
other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac.
–
Other key influences were Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—
notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at Collioure in 1905.
In 1888, Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier.:
― How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint
it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion. ‖ → Fauvism can also be seen
as a mode of Expressionism.
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ORIGINS OF FAUVISM:
Gustave Moreau was the movement's inspirational teacher; a controversial professor at the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris and a Symbolist painter, he taught Matisse, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault and Camoin
during the 1890s, and was viewed by critics as the group's philosophical leader until Matisse was recognized
as such in 1904. Moreau's broad-mindedness, originality and affirmation of the expressive potency of
pure color was inspirational for his students. Matisse said of him, "He did not set us on the right roads, but off
the roads. He disturbed our complacency (umursamazlık).‖ This source of empathy was taken away with
Moreau's death in 1898, but the artists discovered other catalysts for their development.
In 1896, Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited the artist John Peter Russell on the island of Belle Île
off Brittany. Russell was an Impressionist painter; Matisse had never previously seen an Impressionist work
directly, and was so shocked at the style that he left after ten days, saying, "I couldn't stand it any more." The
next year he returned as Russell's student and abandoned his earth-colored palette for bright Impressionist
colors, later stating, "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Russell had been
a close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave Matisse a Van Gogh drawing.
In 1901, Maurice de Vlaminck encountered the work of Van Gogh for the first time at an exhibition,
declaring soon after that he loved Van Gogh more than his own father; he started to work by squeezing
paint directly onto the canvas from the tube.
In parallel with the artists' discovery of contemporary avant-garde art came an appreciation of preRenaissance French art, which was shown in a 1904 exhibition, French Primitives. Another aesthetic
feeding into their work was African sculpture, which Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse were early collectors of.
Many of the Fauve characteristics first cohered in Matisse's painting, Luxe, Calme et Volupté ("Luxury,
Calm and Pleasure"), which he painted in the summer of 1904, whilst in Saint-Tropez with Paul Signac and
Henri-Edmond Cross.
Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid,
brilliant and original draughtsmanship. He was a Master draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but excelled primarily as a
painter. Matisse is regarded, with Picasso, as the greatest artist of the 20th century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild
beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the
expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a
leading figure in modern art.
Luxe, Calme et Volupté is an
oil painting by Henri Matisse
from 1904.
Its title comes from the poem
L'Invitation au voyage, from
Charles Baudelaire's volume
Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers
of Evil):
Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.
↓
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
Henri Matisse,
Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904,
Musée National d'Art Moderne.
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Matisse's early work, which he began exhibiting in
1895, was informed by the dry academic manner,
particularly evident in his drawing. Discovering
manifold artistic movements that coexisted or
succeeded one another on the dynamic Parisian
artistic scene, such as Neo-Classicism, Realism,
Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism, he began to
experiment with a diversity of styles, employing new
kinds of brushwork, light, and composition to create
his own pictorial language.
FAUVISM TO COME...
Its somber (serious) coloration is
typical of Matisse's works executed
between the end of 1901 and the
end of 1903, a period of personal
difficulties for the artist. This
episode has been called Matisse's
Dark Period.
In its palette and technique, Matisse's early
work showed the influence of:
Édouard Manet (1832–1883) and
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).
In the summer of 1904, while visiting his artist
friend Paul Signac at Saint-Tropez, Matisse
discovered the bright light of southern
France, and this discovery led him change his
color selection to a much brighter palette.
He also was exposed, through Signac, to a
Pointillist technique of small color dots
(points) in complementary colors, perfected in
the 1880s by Georges Seurat (1859–1891).
In the summer of 1906, Matisse and André
Derain (1880–1954) made a vacation to
Collioure, a seaport on the Mediterranean
coast, and there, Matisse created brilliantly
colored canvases structured by color applied in
a variety of brushwork, ranging from thick
impasto to flat areas of pure pigment,
sometimes accompanied by a sinuous,
arabesque-like line.
A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the Late Afternoon,
1902.
Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 72,5 x 54,5 cm,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
 The Open Window also known as Open
Window, Collioure, is a painting by Henri
Matisse from 1905, oil on canvas, former
collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay
Whitney, New York, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC.
 An example of the Fauvist style of painting
that Matisse became famous for; and for
which he was a leader, roughly between
the years 1900-1909.
 The theme of an open window in Matisse's
work is a recurring theme throughout his
long career.
 In Open Window, Collioure, 1905, he
painted the view out the window of his
apartment in Collioure, on the Southern
coast of France.
 We see sailboats on the water, from
Matisse's hotel window out onto the
harbor of Collioure.
 He used the theme of the open window in
Paris and especially during the years in Nice
and Etretat, and in his final years,
particularly during the late 1940s.
Open Window, Collioure, 1905,
Oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
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 Green Stripe (Madame Matisse), 1905
 In his green stripe portrait of his wife, he has used
color alone to describe the image.
 Her oval face is bisected with a slash of green and her
coiffure, purpled and top-knotted, juts against a frame
of three jostling colors.
 Her right side repeats the vividness (very bright)of the
intrusive green; on her left, the mauve and orange
echo the colors of her dress.
 This is Matisse's version of the dress, his creative essay
in harmony.
 Matisse painted this unusual portrait of his wife in
1905.
 The green stripe down the center of Amélie Matisse's
face acts as an artificial shadow line and divides the
face in the conventional portraiture style, with a light
and a dark side, Matisse divides the face
chromatically, with a cool and warm side.
 The natural light is translated directly into colors and
the highly visible brush strokes add to the sense of
artistic drama.
Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) 1905;
Oil and tempera on canvas, 40.5 x 32.5 cm;
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
 Woman with a Hat (La femme au chapeau) is a
painting by Henri Matisse from 1905.
 It is believed that the woman in the painting was
Matisse's wife, Amelie.
 It was exhibited with the work of other artists, now
known as "Fauves" at the 1905 Salon d'Automne.
 Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the
phrase :
"Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello
among the wild beasts), referring to a
Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the
room with them.
 The pictures gained considerable condemnation
(strong disapproval), such as "A pot of paint has been
flung in the face of the public" from the critic Camille
Mauclair, but also some favorable attention.
 The painting that was singled out for attacks was
Matisse's Woman with a Hat:
This had a very positive effect on Matisse, who
was suffering demoralization from the bad
reception of his work.
Woman with a Hat, 1905.
Oil on Canvas, 79.4x 59.7 cm, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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Les toits de Collioure, 1905,
Oil on Canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Les toits de Collioure is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905. It is an example
of the Pointillist style that Matisse employed during his early period of
Fauvism. The painting is in the collection of The Hermitage, St. Petersburg,
Russia.
Le bonheur de vivre (The joy of Life),
is a painting by Henri Matisse. In the
central background of the piece is a
group of figures that is similar to the
group depicted in his painting The
Dance (second version).
―This painting was Matisse's own
response to the hostility his work had
met with in the Salon d'Automne of
1905, a response that entrenched his
art even more deeply in the aesthetic
principles that had governed his
Fauvist paintings which had caused a
furor and which did so on a far grander
scale, too.‖
Henri Matisse, Le bonheur de vivre, 1905-6,
Oil on Canvas, 175 x 241 cm,
Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
Paintings such as Woman with a Hat (San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art), when exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, gave rise to the
first of the avant-garde movements (fall 1905–7), named "Fauvism― by a
contemporary art critic, referring to its use of arbitrary combinations
of bright colors and energetic brushwork to structure the
composition.
During his brief Fauvist period, Matisse produced a significant number of remarkable canvases, such as the
portrait of Madame Matisse, called The Green Line (1905; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen); Bonheur
de vivre (1905–6; Barnes Collection, Merion, Pa.); Marguerite Reading (1905–6; MoMA, New York); two
versions of The Young Sailor (1906), the second of which is at the Metropolitan Museum ; Blue Nude:
Memory of Biskra (1907; Baltimore Museum of Art); and two versions of Le Luxe (1907), among others.
Blue Nude I. (Souvenir de Biskra). 1907.
Oil on canvas. Baltimore Museum of Art,
Baltimore, MD, USA.
Blue Nude II, 1952,
gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris
They represent female nudes either seated
or standing, and are among Matisse's final
works in any medium. During the early to
mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health.
Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in
favor of his paper cutouts. The Blue
Nudes, are a major series' of Matisse's final
body of works known as the cutouts. They
are widely viewed as an important and
innovative group of Matisse's collages.
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Subsequently, Matisse's career can be
divided into several periods that changed
stylistically, but his underlying aim always
remained the same: to discover "the
essential character of things" and to
produce an art "of balance, purity, and
serenity," as he himself put it in his "Notes
of a Painter" in 1908.
The years 1908–13 were focused on art
and decoration, producing several large
canvases such as:
 Reclining Odalisque;
 two important mural-size
commissions, Dance and Music
(1909–10);
 a trio of large studio interiors,
exemplified by The Red Studio (1911;
MoMA, New York); and
 a group of spectacularly colored
Moroccan pictures.
Madras Rouge, 1907.
99.4 x 80.5 cm. Oil on canvas. In the collection of the
Barnes Foundation
The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and
deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist color
palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of
dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism (believe in pleasure). The painting is often
associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky's famous musical work The Rite of Spring.
The Dance (second version) is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development
of modern painting".
The Dance (second version), 1910
Oil on Canvas, 260 x 391 cm, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
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The Dessert: Harmony in Red is a
painting by French artist Henri
Matisse, from 1908. It is
considered by some critics to be
Matisse's masterpiece. It is an
example of Impressionism's lack
of a central focal point.
The painting was ordered as
"Harmony in Blue," but Matisse
was dissatisfied with the result,
and so he painted it over with his
preferred red.
It is in the permanent collection
of the Hermitage Museum, but
currently (as of February 2008)
on temporary display in the Royal
Academy, London, England.
MATISSE AND PICASSO:
Around 1904 he met Pablo
Picasso, who was 12 years
younger than him. The two
became life-long friends as well
as rivals and are often compared;
one key difference between
them is that Matisse drew and
painted from nature, while
Picasso was much more inclined
to work from imagination. The
subjects painted most frequently
by both artists were women and
still life, with Matisse more likely
to place his figures in fully
realized interiors.
The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908,
Oil on Canvas, 180 x 220 cm, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
Matisse also limits his perspective in this work. He makes elusions in the line around the table, frames
the chair, the window, and the little house in an innovative manner by cutting them off, and encloses
two of the planes, the green and the blue in a window.
• Matisse painted The
Conversation at a time
when he had
abandoned the open,
spontaneous
brushwork of his Fauve
period in favor of a
flatter and more
decorative style.
• The painting is large
(69 5/8 in. x 85 3/8 in.,
or 177 cm x 217 cm),
and shows Matisse in
profile, standing at the
left in striped pajamas,
while his wife, Amélie,
sits at the left.
• The flatly painted blue
wall behind them is
relieved by a window
opening onto a garden
landscape.
• The pajamas worn by
Matisse were
fashionable as leisure
wear in early 20th
century France.
• They had recently been
introduced to Europe
from India, and Matisse
habitually thereafter
wore pajamas as his
studio working clothes.
The Conversation, c.1911,
Oil on Canvas, 177 x 217 cm; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Art historian Hilary Spurling has described this "stern encounter" as "portray[ing] the profound underlying shape or mechanism of a
relationship laid down for both parties on the day, soon after they first met in 1897, when Matisse
warned his future
wife that, dearly as he loved her, he would always love painting more."
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These were followed by four years (1913–17)
of experimentation and discourse with the
Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. The
resulting compositions were much more
austere (plain & simple), almost geometrically
structured and at times close to abstraction,
as shown in the View of Notre-Dame (1914;
MoMA, New York), and the Yellow Curtain
(1915; private collection).
Le Rifain assis, 1912-13,
Oil on Canvas, 200 x 160 cm. Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
The Yellow Curtain, 1915,
Oil on Canvas, 146 X 97 cm, Museum of Modern Art New York City
Andre Derain (1880-1954) Derain was one of the founding fathers of fauvism, and one of its wildest practitioners.
Influenced by van Gogh and working with Vlaminck in 1904 he felt that the impressionists had disintegrated their work into dots
excessively. Instead, he chose to use wide, choppy (kopuk) brush strokes of pure color. In 1905, he worked with Matisse to
bring the technique to maturity.
Derain and Matisse
worked together through
the summer of 1905 in the
Mediterranean village of
Collioure and later that
year displayed their highly
innovative paintings at the
Salon d'Automne. The
vivid, unnatural colors
led the critic Louis
Vauxcelles to derisively
(alaycı) dub their works
as les Fauves, or "the
wild beasts", marking the
start of the Fauvist
movement.
1905
Boats
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Boats at Collioure's Harbor
Collioure
1905, Paintings of Collioure
Boats at Collioure
St. Paul's Cathedral from the Thames, 1906
Suburb of Collioure
Blackfriars Bridge, 1906
In March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to compose a series of paintings
with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of which are still extant), Derain put forth a portrait of London that
was radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as Whistler or Monet. With
bold colors and compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge. These
London paintings remain among his most popular work.
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The Thames at Westminster (Westminster Bridge)
1871; Oil on canvas, 47 x 72.5 cm; Collection Lord Astor of Hever; National Gallery, London
André Derain was a
quintessential Fauve. He
reduced his brushstrokes to
Morse Code: dots and
dashes of burning primary
colors, exploding, he said,
like, ―charges of dynamite.‖
The Houses of Parliament, 1906
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Monet, Claude
Houses of Parliament, London, Sun
Breaking Through the Fog
1904; Oil on canvas, 81 x 92 cm; Musee d'Orsay,
Paris
The Houses of Parliament, 1906
London Bridge, 1906
André Derain
Le Parlement, Effet de Brouillard
1904; 82.6 x 92.7 cm; Museum of Fine Arts,
St. Petersburg
Houses of Parliament, London
1905; Oil on canvas, 81 x 92 cm; Musee
Marmottan, Paris
London Bridge 1885
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
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The Thames, 1906
Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906
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Derain pioneered strong color
as an expressive end in itself.
His bold, directional
brushstrokes eliminated lines
and the distinction between
light and shade.
For the first two decades of the
twentieth century, Derain was at the
avant-garde hub, a creator Fauvism,
and an early Cubist. He later turned
into old Masters for inspiration and
his work became dry and academic.
The Dancer, 1906
Revision: Fauvism
Movement in French painting from c. 1898 to 1906
characterized by a violence of colors, often applied
unmixed from commercially produced tubes of paint
in broad flat areas, by a spontaneity and even
roughness of execution and by a bold (very clear,
strong, bright) sense of surface design. It was the
first of a succession of avant-garde movements in
20th-century art and was influential on nearcontemporary and later trends such as
Expressionism, Orphism and the development of
abstract art.
An early-20th-century movement in painting begun
by a group of French artists and marked by the use
of bold, often distorted forms and vivid colors.
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Picasso (1881-1973)
The King of Modern Art
•
For half a century, Picasso led the forces of artistic innovation, shocking the world
by introducing a new style, an then moving on as soon as his unorthodoxy
became accepted.
•
His most significant contribution, aided by Braque, was inventing Cubism, the
major revolution of twentieth century art.
•
Until the age of 91, Picasso remained vital and versatile
•
Although Picasso worked in a number of distinctive styles, his art was always
autobiographical. ―The paintings,‖ he said, ―are the pages of my diary.‖
•
Women were his chief sources of information, so a chronolocigal overview of his
paintings reveal the features of his lovelife.
Blue Period (1901-1904)
•
•
•
(çok yönlü).
The Old Guitarist
Pablo Picasso
Oil On Panel, 1903
Picasso’s first original style grew out of his down-and-out years as
an impoverished artist.
The Blue Period of 1901-04 is socalled because of the cool blue
shades Picasso used.
Frequently he depicted solitary figures set against almost empty
backgrounds, the blue palette imparting a mood of melancholy
and desolation to images that suggest unhappiness and
dejection, poverty, despondency, and despair. Most prevalent
among his subjects were the old, the destitute, the blind, the
homeless, and the otherwise underprivileged outcasts of society.
Brooding Woman (recto-front), Three Children (verso-back), 1904
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Watercolor on paper, (27 x 36.8 cm), MoMA.
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The Blind Man's Meal, 1903
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
The Blind Man's Meal, painted in
Barcelona in the autumn of 1903,
summarizes the stylistic characteristics
of Picasso's Blue Period:
 Rigorous (sert) drawing,
 simple hierarchic compositions
and forms,
 and of course, a blue tonality.
The composition presents a forlorn
figure seated at a frugal repast
Oil on canvas (95.3 x 94.6 cm)
 In a letter, preserved in the Barnes
Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania,
Picasso gives a very precise description
of the composition:
 "I am painting a blind man at the table.
He holds some bread in his left hand and
gropes with his right hand for a jug of
wine."
 An empty bowl and a white napkin
complete the still life on the table.
 The man's slightly contorted figure, long
thin El Greco–like hands, unadorned
surroundings, and his blindness make his
disenfranchised condition all the more
poignant.
 The highlights on his face and neck,
hands, bread, and napkin put the figure in
relief against the austere background.
 The painting is not merely a portrait of a
blind man; it is also Picasso's
commentary on human suffering in
general.
 The meager meal of bread and wine
invites references to the figure of Christ
and the principal dogma of Catholic faith,
whereby bread and wine represent
Christ's body and blood, sacramental
associations that Picasso as a Spaniard
would have known.
 Additionally, the work elicits affinities to
Picasso's own situation at the time, when,
impoverished and depressed, he closely
identified with the unfortunates of society.
Rose Period (1905-1906)
•
•
•
•
•
The Rose Period signifies the time when the style of Pablo Picasso's painting used cheerful orange
and pink colors in contrast to the cool, somber tones of the previous Blue Period.
It lasted from 1904 to 1906.
Picasso was happy in his relationship with Fernande Olivier whom he had met in 1904 and this has
been suggested as one of the possible reasons he changed his style of painting.
Harlequins, circus performers and clowns appear frequently in the Rose Period and will populate
Picasso's paintings at various stages through the rest of his long career. The harlequin, a comedic
character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for
Picasso.
The Rose Period has been considered French influenced, while the Blue Period more Spanish
influenced, although both styles emerged while Picasso was living in Paris.
Picasso's highest selling painting, Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a pipe) was
painted during the Rose Period. Other Rose Period works include:
Woman in a Chemise (Madeleine) (1904-05), Lady with a Fan (1905),
Two Youths (1905), Harlequin Family (1905), Harlequin's Family With an
Ape (1905), La famille de saltimbanques (1905), Boy with a Dog (1905),
Nude Boy (1906), and The Girl with a Goat (1906).
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
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 The destitute outcasts featured in
Picasso's Blue Period gave way, in
1905, to circus performers and
harlequins in more colorful settings.
 At the Lapin Agile is a canvas nearly
square and broadly painted. It was
originally conceived to decorate a bar
in Montmartre. We depict the interior
of that bar here.
 Since the painting would be seen
across a crowded and smoky room,
Picasso's composition was of
posterlike simplicity.
 He aligned glasses and figures—hatted
and shown from full-face to profile
view—along severe diagonals, ending
with a seated guitarist, Frédéric (Frédé)
Gérard, the café's owner.
 Standing at the counter is Picasso
himself, dressed as the melancholy
and gaunt Harlequin in a vivid
diamond-patterned shirt and threecornered hat.
 Behind him, in profile with heavy
makeup and pouty lips, leans Germaine
Pichot, a model and notorious femme
fatale, wearing a gaudy orange dress,
bead choker, boa, and feathered hat.
 In 1901, unrequited love for Germaine
had driven Picasso's close friend Carlos
Casagemas to suicide, a melodrama
that continued to haunt Picasso several
years later.
At the Lapin Agile, 1905
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Oil on canvas (99.1 x 100.3 cm)
• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(The Young Ladies of
Avignon) portrays five nude
female prostitutes in a brothel
on Avinyó Street in
Barcelona.
• All of the figures depicted are
physically jarring, none
conventionally feminine, all
slightly menacing, and each
is rendered with angular and
disjointed body shapes.
• Two of the women are
rendered with African
mask-like faces, giving
them a savage and
mysterious aura.
• In his adaption of
Primitivism and
abandonment of
perspective in favor of a
flat, two-dimensional
picture plane, Picasso
makes a radical departure
from traditional European
painting.
• The work is one of Picasso's
most famous, and is widely
considered to be a seminal
work in the early
development of both Cubism
and modern art.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,
1907
Oil on canvas; 243.8 x 233.7 cm,
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York
Although still a transitional work,
this large painting may be called the
first Cubist picture. Its combined
influences are manifold, ranging
from El Greco, the bathers of
Cézanne, and Iberian and African
art that Picasso had recently seen at
the ethnographic museum in Paris.
Picasso made innumerable
preparatory studies for this work.
The title, given years later by a
friend of Picasso, is an ironic
reference to a cabaret or maison
publique on the Carrer d'Avinyó
(Avignon Street) in Barcelona. The
dynamic power of this work, its
expressionistic violence and the
barbaric intensity of the five
women, especially the two on the
right, was unsurpassed in European
art at that time. The picture
remained with Picasso until 1920,
when it passed into the collection of
the famous couturier Jacques
Doucet. While in Picasso's studio
and seen by other artists, the work
acquired a legendary reputation.
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Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European
painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and
literature. There are two branches of Cubism:
1.Analytic Cubism was both radical and influential as a short but highly
significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France.
2.In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, the movement spread and
remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained
popularity.
Art historian Douglas Cooper divided
Cubism into three phases:
1. Early Cubism (1906-1908)
•
•
Picasso
Braque
2. High Cubism (1909-1914)
•
Juan Gris
3. Late Cubism (1914-1921)
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Analytical Cubism
• Analytical Cubism is one of the two major branches of the artistic
movement of Cubism and was developed between 1908 and 1912.
In contrast to Synthetic cubism, Analytic cubists "analyzed" natural
forms and reduced the forms into basic geometric parts on the twodimensional picture plane. Color was almost non-existent except for
the use of a monochromatic scheme that often included grey, blue
and ochre. Instead of an emphasis on color, Analytic cubists
focused on forms like the cylinder, sphere and the cone to
represent the natural world. During this movement, the works
produced by Picasso and Braque shared stylistic similarities.
Synthetic Cubism
• Synthetic Cubism was the second main movement within Cubism
that was developed by Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others
between 1912 and 1919.
• Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different
textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large
variety of merged subject matter. It was the beginning of collage
materials being introduced as an important ingredient of fine art
work.→ the invention of a new art form called, collage.
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• The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should
copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of
perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.
• They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the
canvas.
• So they reduced and fractured objects into geometric forms, and
then realigned these within a shallow, relieflike space.
• They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.
The liberating formal concepts initiated by Cubism also had far-reaching consequences
for Dada and Surrealism, as well as for all artists pursuing abstraction in Germany,
Holland, Italy, England, America, and Russia.
In Cubist work up to 1910, the subject of a
picture was usually discernible (görünebilir).
Although figures and objects were
dissected or "analyzed" into a multitude of
small facets, these were then reassembled,
after a fashion, to evoke those same figures
or objects.
During "high" Analytic Cubism (1910–12),
also called "hermetic," Picasso and Braque
so abstracted their works that they were
reduced to just a series of overlapping
planes and facets mostly in nearmonochromatic browns, grays, or blacks.
In their work from this period, Picasso and
Braque frequently combined
representational motifs with letters. Their
favorite motifs were still lifes with musical
instruments, bottles, pitchers (sürahi),
glasses, newspapers, playing cards, and
the human face and figure. Landscapes
were rare.
Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier),
late spring 1910, Paris.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Oil on canvas, (100.3 x 73.6 cm), MoMA.
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Candlestick and Playing Cards on a Table, Autumn 1910
Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)
Oil on canvas Oval: 65.1 x 54.3 cm
The composition of this small oval
painting consists of clearly defined
Cubist planes in hues of brown and
ocher highlighted by black and white. At
the center can be identified the corner of
a table upon which rests the round base
of a brass candlestick (şamdan) and, at
the right, two playing cards —the ace of
hearts and the six of diamonds.
This still life presents one of the earliest
instances of Braque's choice of an
oval format. Soon, both Braque and
Picasso would make frequent use of this
shape. In rectangular Analytic Cubist
paintings, planes and facets of forms
concentrate in the center of a
composition, and the corners remain
relatively empty. An oval format avoids
such corners, and therefore Braque and
Picasso sometimes favored this shape.
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910,
Pablo Picasso, (Spanish, 1881–1973)
The Art Institute of Chicago.
Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would
have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't
had a business sense?
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"Ma Jolie,"
1913-1914
Pablo Picasso
"Ma Jolie,"
winter 1911-12, Paris
Pablo Picasso
(Spanish, 1881-1973)
Oil on canvas,
(100 x 64.5 cm), MoMA.
"Ma Jolie!" (My pretty girl) was Picasso's pet name for his lover
Marcelle Humbert ("Eva"). These easily legible words form a stark
contrast to the nearly indecipherable image of Eva playing a string
instrument. Numerous clues connect "Ma Jolie" to reality:
1.a triangular form in the lower center, strung like a guitar;
2.below the strings, four fingers, with an angular elbow to the
right; and
3.in the upper half, perhaps a floating smile.
Together these elements suggest a woman holding a musical
instrument, but the picture hints at reality only to deny it. Planes,
lines, spatial cues, shadings, and other traces of painting's
language of illusion are abstracted from descriptive uses; the figure
almost disappears into a network of flat, straight-edged,
semitransparent planes.
Yet "Ma Jolie," an example of high Analytic Cubism, is
actually a painting on a very traditional theme—a
woman holding a musical instrument. The palette of
brown and sepia is reminiscent of the work of
Rembrandt, and Picasso emphasizes the handmade
nature of the brushstrokes, underlining the artist's
human presence.
Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, Summer 1911
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Oil on canvas (61.3 x 50.5 cm)
Picasso painted Still Life with a Bottle of Rum
during the summer of 1911 in Céret, the small town
in the French Pyrenees that was so popular with
poets, musicians, and artists—especially the
Cubists—before World War I that it has been
called the "spiritual home of Cubism."
One is hard-pressed to see the bottle of rum
indicated in the title of this work, which was painted
during the most abstract phase of Cubism, known
as "high" Analytic Cubism (1910–12).
In the upper center of the picture are what seem to
be the neck and opening of a bottle. Some spidery
black lines to the left of it might denote sheet
music, and the round shape lower down, the base
of a glass. In the center, at the far right, is the
pointed spout of a porrón (Spanish wine bottle).
SIGNIFICANCE:
This is one of the first works in which
Picasso included letter forms. It has been
suggested that the ones shown at the
left, LETR, refer to Le Torero, the
magazine for bullfighting fans—Picasso
being one of them—but they might
simply be a pun on lettre, French for
"word."
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Still Life with a Pair of Banderillas,
Summer 1911
Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)
Oil on canvas (65.4 x 54.9 cm)
Braque joined Picasso in Céret, a small town in the
French Pyrenees, sometime during the last two
weeks in August and first week of September 1911.
By that time, their works had become difficult to
distinguish—a phenomenon that the artists actually
strove to achieve, by not signing their paintings.
During the last phase of the style known as
Analytic Cubism—also referred to as "high" or
"hermetic"—Picasso and Braque broke down their
forms ever more. Thus their compositions consisted
mainly of large, abstract planes and diagonal
lines. The sober palette of grays, browns, and
blacks—some opaque, some not—often applied, as
here, in short brushstrokes to create a dappled
effect, enabled the planes to overlap and merge
with one another in a shallow, relieflike space.
Some tenuous links with reality survive where
images of naturalistic objects, or parts of them, are
incorporated in the composition.
The banderillas of the title, which cross each other
diagonally and horizontally, are the most
recognizable objects in the picture.
The letters ORERO stand for the bullfighting
magazine Le Torero, references to which also appear
in contemporary works by Picasso, as in Still Life
with a Bottle of Rum, painted at the same time in
Céret.
Artillery, 1911
Roger de La Fresnaye (French, 1885–1925)
Oil on canvas (130.2 x 159.4 cm)
Forms are reduced to their utmost
simplicity and geometric core, while the
color scheme—taking its cue from the
tricolore held aloft—is composed of red,
white, and blue, along with earthen tones.
Painted in 1911, the year he became
associated with Cubism and joined the
Section d'Or group, Artillery demonstrates
the artist's ever greater emphasis on the
solid geometry that underlies all forms in
nature.
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While Picasso and Braque are
credited with creating this new
visual language, it was adopted
and further developed by many
painters, including Fernand
Léger, Robert and Sonia
Delaunay, Juan Gris, Roger de
La Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp,
Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger,
and even Diego Rivera.
Though primarily associated with
painting, Cubism also exerted a
profound influence on
twentieth-century sculpture
and architecture. The major
Cubist sculptors were Alexander
Archipenko, Raymond DuchampVillon, and Jacques Lipchitz.
Portrait of Picasso, 1912
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)
Oil on canvas
Although the painting is neither signed nor dated,
stylistically it belongs to the group of still lifes Gris
composed while in Céret, a small town in the
Pyrenees, from August to October 1913. It was a
most productive period for the artist. By then he had
developed a colorful Cubist style of broad,
angular, overlapping planes, a style that within a
year would evolve into a fully formed Synthetic
Cubism, influenced by Picasso's and Braque's
papiers collées.
On the simulated wood-grain table rest three playing
cards—heart, diamond, and club—a violin, and the
newspaper Le Journal. The violin is indicated by
different shaded passages of wood-graining, as also
by the instrument's purple, green, and black
"shadows." Black, sky blue, and purple angular
planes enrich the composition, which is set
against a deep rust-red diamond-patterned
background emulating the wallpaper.
Violin and Playing Cards, 1913
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)
Oil on canvas (100 x 65.4 cm)
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The Conquest of the Air, 1913.
Roger de La Fresnaye (French, 1885-1925)
Oil on canvas, (235.9 x 195.6 cm), MoMA.
This work, created in Paris, belongs to a group of about seventeen other
papiers collés by Picasso composed solely from newspaper articles. Here,
he arranged cuttings from Le Journal of December 3 and 9, 1912 , on a
sort of scaffolding of straight and slightly curved charcoal lines. The
various texts refer to the Balkan Wars, to the unrest of miners in the Nord
and Pas-de-Calais départements, to critical issues debated in Parliament
and in the Chambers, and to local announcements and advertisements.
During the winter of 1912–13, Picasso executed a great number
of papiers collés, which initiated the era of Synthetic Cubism.
With this new technique of pasting colored or printed pieces of
paper in their compositions, Picasso and Braque swept away
the last vestiges (iz) of three-dimensional space (illusionism)
that still remained in their "high" Analytic work.
THE DIFFERENCE:
In Analytic Cubism, the small facets of a dissected or
"analyzed" object are reassembled to evoke that same object,
In the shallow space of Synthetic Cubism —initiated by the
papiers collés– large pieces of neutral or colored paper
themselves allude to a particular object, either because they are
often cut out in the desired shape or else sometimes bear a
graphic element that clarifies the association.
Man with Hat and a Violin, December 1912-1913
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Cut-and-pasted newspaper, with charcoal, on two sheets of cut-and-pasted paper
(122.2x47.3 cm)
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Still Life with Tenora (summer or fall 1913).
Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963)
Cut-and-pasted printed and painted paper, charcoal, chalk,
and pencil on gessoed canvas, (95.2 x 120.3 cm), MoMA.
Still Life with Tenora is a consummate example of
Braque's papier collé (literally, pasted paper) style. The
bold geometric fragments of contrasting types of paper
interlaced with the figurative motifs drawn in charcoal
evoke the structure of a fugue, in which two distinct
melodies intertwine in a rich, sonorous composition, each
acting as a foil to the other's reality.
SUMMARY: So, the artists chose to break down the subjects
they were painting into a number of facets, showing several
different aspects of one object simultaneously.
The work up to 1912 is known as Analytical Cubism,
concentrating on geometrical forms using subdued colors.
The second phase, known as Synthetic Cubism, used more
decorative shapes, stencilling (şablon), collage, and brighter
colors. It was then that artists such as Picasso and Braque
started to use pieces of cut-up newspaper in their
paintings.
The invention of the papier collé in 1912 by Braque and
Pablo Picasso introduced a revolution in Western
painting, whose repercussions are still being felt today.
By pasting fragments of paper (newspaper, wallpaper,
and wood-grained paper) onto their still-life
compositions, they introduced real materials and
textures into an art hitherto based on illusionistic
renderings.
The significance of this breakthrough cannot be
overestimated because through this technique these
artists declared the autonomy of the painted or drawn
image, and radically severed it from any attempt at
representation. The fragments attached to the picture's
surface rarely followed the contours or silhouettes of the
drawn motifs (glasses, bottles, or musical instruments),
but, paradoxically, contradicted them. Thus, they
countered the conventional devices of modeling and
depth perspective, and drew attention to the absolute
flatness of the two-dimensional plane.
The papier collé, invented by Georges Braque
and Pablo Picasso in 1912, found a rich and
complex expression in the 1914 works of Gris. In
conception, his papiers collés are closer to
paintings than are the sparely drawn compositions
of his forerunners; unlike them Gris covers the
whole surface with pasted papers and paint.
In works such as Breakfast, Gris's use of printed papers is
more literal than theirs: the wood-grained fragments
usually follow some of the contours of a table and are
therefore integral to the composition; and his perspectival
cues are relatively legible and precise. His superimposed
drawings of domestic objects, fragmented yet softly
modeled and most often seen from above, combine to
create a more representational pictorial composition than
those of Braque and Picasso.
Despite these observations, Breakfast is full of troubling
contradictions. The striped wallpaper background spills
across the table; certain objects (a glass on the left, a
bottle in the upper right) appear as ghostly presences; the
coffeepot is disjointed; the tobacco packet is painted and
drawn in photographically realistic trompe l'oeil, but its
label is real. Thus, while aspects of domestic comfort are
captured in this image, Gris also raises many subjective
and objective questions about how reality is perceived.
Breakfast 1914. Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887-1927)
Gouache, oil, and crayon on cut-and-pasted printed paper on
canvas with oil and crayon, (80.9 x 59.7 cm), MoMA.
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 76
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Along with Picasso, Braque, and
Gris, Fernand Léger ranks among
the foremost Cubist painters. By
1912, he had developed his own
adaptation of Cubism. Utilizing
pure color, he simplified the
forms in his pictures into geometric
components of the cone, cube, and
sphere, leaving their contours
unbroken. Leger was also
fascinated by machines and
modern technology.
The curved forms Léger added to
the angular Cubist vocabulary
was his most significant
reputation. He is also noted for his
urban, industrial landscapes full of
polished, metallic shapes, robotic
humanoids, and hard-edged
mechanical gears.
Exit the Ballets Russes, 1914
Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955)
Oil on canvas, (136.5 x 100.3 cm)
The Bargeman, which shows
a boat set against a
background dominated by the
facades of houses, provided
the artist with the opportunity
to combine several of his
favorite themes: motion, the
city, and men at work.
With colorful and
overlapping disks,
cylinders, cones, and
diagonals, Léger presents a
syncopated (kısıtlı), abstract
equivalent of the visual
impressions of a man
traveling along the Seine
through Paris. All that can be
seen of the bargeman,
however, are his tube-like
arms, in the upper part of the
composition, which end in
metallic-looking claws.
The Bargeman, 1918
Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955)
Oil on canvas (48.6 x 54.3 cm)
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Table by a Window, November 1917
Jean Metzinger (French, 1883–1956)
Oil on canvas (81.3 x 65.1 cm)
Jean Metzinger was a member of the
so-called Puteaux Group of artists, who
were disciples of Cubism centered
around the brothers Duchamp-Villon.
He was also a theoretician and, with his
close friend Albert Gleizes, co-authored
the book Du Cubisme, published in
1912.
Throughout his career, Metzinger liked
to create variations on the same
theme.
During the years 1916–19, still life
constituted one such major theme.
This work depicts an arrangement of
objects—a vase with flowers, a glass
and an absinthe spoon, the journal
L'Heure, and a playing card —placed
on a table next to a window in the
artist's studio in Meudon near Paris.
Man with a Guitar, 1915.
Jacques Lipchitz
(American, born Lithuania.
1891-1973)
Limestone, (97.2 x 26.7 x 19.5 cm),
MoMA.
Still Life with Fruit Dish and Mandolin, 1919,
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)
Oil on Canvas
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The Studio, 1928,
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Oil on Canvas
Synthetic cubism employs strong colors and decorative sheds. At left the painter holds a brush indicated by a
small diagonal line at the end of horizontal ―arm.‖ his oval ―head‖ contains three vertical eyes, perhaps
suggesting the painter’s superior vision. A floating circle is all that remains of the artist’s palette. His subject, a
still life of fruit bowl and bust on a table with red tablecloth, also consists of geometric shapes. What holds the
composition together are repeated and precisely related vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines.
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of
the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed.
Guernica shows suffering people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence
and chaos.
The overall scene is within a room where, at an open end on the left, a wideeyed bull stands over a woman grieving over a dead child in her arms.
The centre is occupied by a horse falling in agony as it had just been run
through by a spear or javelin. It is important to note that the cut in the horse's
side is a major focus of the painting.
Two "hidden" images formed by the horse appear in Guernica (illustrated to the
right):
A human skull overlays the horse's body.
A bull appears to gore the horse from underneath. The bull's head is formed
mainly by the horse's entire front leg which has the knee on the ground. The
leg's knee cap forms the head's nose. A horn appears within the horse's breast.
The bull's tail forms the image of a flame with smoke rising from it, seemingly
appearing in a window created by the lighter shade of gray surrounding it.
Under the horse is a dead, apparently dismembered soldier; his hand on a
severed arm still grasps a shattered sword from which a flower grows.
On the open palm of the dead soldier is a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom
derived from the stigmata of Christ.
Picasso created this mural in one month. ―Painting is not done to decorate
apartments,‖ Picasso said, ―it is an instrument of war for attack and
defense against enemy.‖ Picasso incorporated certain design elements
to create a powerful effect of anguish. He used a black-white-gray
palette to emphasize hopelessness and purposely distorted figures to
evoke violence. The jagged lines (tırtıklı) and shattered (kırık) planes
of Cubism denote terror and confusion, while a pyramid format holds
the composition together. Some of Picasso’s symbols like the slain
fighter with a broken sword implying defeat, was not hard to decipher.
Picasso’s only explanation of these symbols was: ―The bull is not
fascism, but it is brutality and darkness...The horse represents the
people.‖
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28.10.2011
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of
the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed.
A light bulb blazes in the shape of an evil eye over the suffering horse's head (the bare
bulb of the torturer's cell.) Picasso's intended symbolism in regards to this object is
related to the Spanish word for light bulb; "bombilla", which makes an allusion to
"bomb" and therefore signifies the destructing effect which technology can have on
society.
To the upper right of the horse, a frightened female figure, who seems to be
witnessing the scenes before her, appears to have floated into the room through a
window. Her arm, also floating in, carries a flame-lit lamp. The lamp is positioned very
close to the bulb, and is a symbol of hope, clashing with the light bulb.
From the right, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center below the floating
female figure. She looks up blankly into the blazing light bulb.
Daggers that suggest screaming replace the tongues of the bull, grieving woman, and
horse.
A bird, possibly a dove, stands on a shelf behind the bull in panic.
On the far right, a figure with arms raised in terror is entrapped by fire from above and
below.
A dark wall with an open door defines the right end of the mural.
 The shape and posture of the bodies express protest.
 Picasso uses black, white, and grey paint to set a somber mood and
express pain and chaos.
 Flaming buildings and crumbling walls not only express the
destruction of Guernica, but reflect the destructive power of civil war.
 The newspaper print used in the painting reflects how Picasso learned
of the massacre.
 The light bulb in the painting represents the sun.
 The broken sword near the bottom of the painting symbolizes the
defeat of the people at the hand of their tormentors. (Berger 1980)
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