Pablo Picasso
jeudi 21 février 2008
23:06
First Communion
Is the painting which is hardly expected to belong Picasso, though it is the fact. The First Communion
is the perfect example of the choice of the artistic way of Pablo Picasso, who could have become a
classical painter, though prefered to join avant-gardists, and even be one of the esblishers of
Cubism.
First Communion
1895-1896
The tragedy 1903
The tragedy is the painting which refers to the so-called Blue Period, the period of Picasso's life
when he was quite depressed, which was the consequence of his close friend's death, lack of
money…
We can observe a family, perhaps very lonely, as if they were outsiders; The painting itself is under
the influence of Catalan sculpture, because at that time he was spending much time in Barcelona
Knowing some facts about Picasso's life, we can suggest that through the Tragedy the artist was
trying somehow to represent his own impressions and feelings of being excluded from a society
which didn't seem to accept him
"Nude against a red background"
1906
This painting belongs to the period which was supposed to "prepare" Cubism, and is known as
PreCubism
The model has a distortion; thus the head is too large in comparison to the body, the elbow seems
not to represent the reality , the hips are too narrow, as if they belong rather to a male human
being; All these allows us to say that Picasso had already broken up with classical traditions and
transformed the reality.
Observing the face of the model, we can suppose that the image is influenced by African art, by
african masks, which is not surprising due to the fact that a lot of modern artist were attracted by
primitive Art; african masks were in a high respect, because one could feel the real extensivety of
the expressions.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907.
i
This painting still refers to Precubism .Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is the painting, which is still under
the influence of African and Spanish Art, thus the faces of the three of the women look like masks;
Another aspect; which can be considered as a starting point for Cubism, is that the artist is mixing
the 2 ways of seei ng the face- profile and full-face, which is according to him, gives much more
opportunities for a viewer to achieve the essence of personality
a profile nose into a frontal view of a face.
Certainly Picasso was inspired by Cezanne in the choice of nude women composition, and he is of
course influenced by African sculpture, of course this is a step forward cubism, which is an art
movement involved changes in the treatment of form and space, although the subject-matter they
chose-nudes, portraits and still life was largely traditional; it was very striking painting for the
contemporaries.This painting appeared a hundred years ago can still appear as radical and
quintessentially modern. Everywhere there are sharp angles such as elbows, the noses and the
pointed breasts. All the bodies are in tension, even the seated figure in the bottom right-hand
corner. The faces are all extremely simplified, but the profile on the left is dark like that of an ancient
tribeswoman. The strangest part of all is the head in the bottom right-hand corner, which is clearly
seen from more than one viewpoint.picasso here is trying to present the traditional subject in a
different way;The inter-relationship between background and and foreground has gone;
Why influenced by african masks?
Because they were used to convey a message by means of an image which is vivid and powerful but
not naturalistic.
Pablo Picasso. Dryad. 1908.
The Dryad is the painting which is getting us closer to the period of Cubism, here we can observe
distortions of the body,for instance, the shoulders are not on the same level, the artist reducts the
body and rejects proportions, he is transforming reality;
The face of the Dryad is once more under the influence of African masks, and in fact looks like a face
of a male human being.
Woman with a Fan. 1908.
The Woman with a fan is referring to the very end of Precubism period.
Here we can definitely observe the distortion of the body, the reduction of its elements, and the use
of geometric forms to represent the body of a woman.
Here, again, we can see the influence of an african mask, in shape as well as in the colour
Pablo Picasso. Three Women. 1908.
The three women is related to the starting point of Cubism. Now it's not so obvious with the subject,
because due to reducing the use of colours, the subject is dissappearing in the greed of the
background. There is no longer much space between the bodies, they are making a whole and as
well it looks like they are going directly out of the rocks behind them or even continueing them. The
shapes of the bodies are reduced and much more close to geometric forms.
"Le paysage avec deux figures" 1908
Here we can observe that the subject is dissappearing in the background, we can see that the two
figures are integrated in the nature, thus one figure is somehow the root of the tree and the second
one is enclosed into the branch with an arm making the branches. The crowns of the trees as well as
the roots; and thefore the bodies are heading each other, producing a kind of a circle, unity.
In 1908 Picasso and Braque are still exploring the possibilities of an art approach, taught them by
cezanne, here is a reference to cezanne's worksThe village and the mountain on the background with reduction to geometrical forms and making
the differece between objects by using different shades of a colour
La Baigneuse belongs to a period when Picasso was still inspired highly by
l'Art Prémier, the african statues made of wood. Observing this painting we can see
That the human body of a female in fact is not working in reality, we can see smth
Which looks like a connection between the arm and the shoulder, as if it was a toy.
But we can also refer this painting to the beginning of Analytical Cubism, where the artist starts to
disansamble , to separate the pieces,spliting forms up, in order to propose something new
By 1912 the possibilities of analytical cubism seemed to be exhausted. Picasso and Braque began
new experiments. Within a year they were composing still lifes of cut-and-pasted scraps of material,
with only a few lines added to complete the design, such as Still-Life with Chair Caning. These
collages led to synthetic cubism -- paintings with large, schematic patterning, such as The Guitar.
"La Baigneuse"
1908-1909
In the Nude we can observe the same features of the woman, or at least a female being, as we could
see in the earlier work by Picasso "La Baigneuse" , but of course the features being transformed, this
is an example of Analytical Cubism, a style of painting, which was developed by Picasso and Georges
Braque, using monochrome brownish and neutral colours.
Here we can see an absolute reduction of forms and shapes, the painting got two -demensional; the
figure is dissappearing in the background, and of course, the figure of a woman is integrated into the
background
"Nude" 1910
In the painting "La femme avec Poires" we can observe the reduction to geometrical forms, the
eyes, nose , mouth is the use of retungles.
Why pears? Perhaps, it's a certain reference to Cezanne
"Femme avec poires" 1909
Here we can see how much the figure of the Nude is integrated into the background, which is the
representation of nature and the houses, the use of monochrome colours are making it difficult to
distinguish the body from the background
To add, we can see the reduction to geometrical forms, the arm of the woman is not working, as if it
was turned from another angle, which is disassambling
"Nude in an armchair" 1909
"Jeune fille à la mandoline" 1910
Same integration of the figure into the background, ising the monochrome brownish and neutral
colours, and this playing with different shades of the colour is allowing us to distinguish the body
from the background.
Everything is reduced to geometrical forms, and we can feel that the body of young woman looks
like it was the puzzle, as if she wzs made from different pieces
"The Seated Nude" 1909- 1910
Here we can observe that the subject of the painting is highly integrated into the background, and
the visible presence is made by the use of slightly different shades of the colour, thus we can refer to
the analytical painting once more talking about playing with different shades of the colour and using
neutral colours.
The features of the man are almost nothing, bot nonetheless we are able to guess the face, the
shoulders, the upper part of the body, thanks to the use of
different shades of the colour
And of course everything is rduced to geometrical forms
"Portrait d'Ambroise Vollard" 1910
The subject is so integrated into the background, so we almosi can't recognize the features
"Portrait of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler" 1910
Here we can observe the violin, but with the parts split, this is no longer a representation of the
instrument in coherent way, this is the way to give an idea of intstrument to the viewer,
"Violin and Grapes"
1912
La bouteille de vieux marc 1912
This painting is in the beginning of the second period of Cibism, the so-called Synthetic Cubism,
There is no more careful paiting of the subject which is supposed to be the bottle, in fact there are
just some lines which can give a viewer an idea of the subject, the lines which are making somehow
the cirles are representing the table with the bottle seen from above, which is the technique f the
analytical cubism- the seeing of the subject from different points of view; the piece of a newspaper
stuck on the painting and the wall paper are representation of the bourgois room;
,
"Seated Bather" 1930
This painting of the older period of Picasso's art which is no more directly connected with cubism,
but there are some elements of disansambling, as we could observe inthe paintings referring to
cubism
PP biography
vendredi 22 février 2008
13:40
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and
sculptor. As one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century art, he is best known for cofounding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his
most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and his depiction of the
German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica (1937).
Contents
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1 Biography
1.1 Personal life
1.2 Political views
2 Art
2.1 Before 1901
2.2 Blue Period
2.3 Rose Period
2.4 African-influenced Period
2.5 Cubism
2.6 Classicism and surrealism
2.7 Later works
3 Commemoration and legacy
4 Value of paintings
5 Children
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
8.1 Museums
8.2 Essays
Biography
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios
Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives.
Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, per Spanish custom.
Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y
Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López. Picasso’s family was middle-class; his father was a
painter whose specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz
was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz’s ancestors were
minor aristocrats.
The house where Picasso was born, in Málaga
The young Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age; according to his
mother, his first words were “piz, piz”, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for ‘pencil’.[1] From
the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil
painting. Ruiz was a traditional, academic artist and instructor who believed that proper training
required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live
models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.
The family moved to La Coruña in 1891 so his father could become a professor at the School of Fine
Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion the father found his son painting over his
unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son’s technique, Ruiz felt that the
thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting.[2]
In 1895, Picasso's seven-year old sister, Conchita, died of diptheria - a traumatic event in his
life.[3]After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, with Ruiz transferring to its School of Fine
Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home.[4] Ruiz
persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced
class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the
impressed jury admitted Picasso, who was still 13. The student lacked discipline but made
friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented him a small room close to home so
Picasso could work alone, yet Ruiz checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his son’s
drawings. The two argued frequently.
Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid’s Royal Academy of San
Fernando, the foremost art school in the country.[4] In 1897, Picasso, age 16, set off for the first
time on his own. Yet his difficulties accepting formal instruction led him to stop attending class soon
after enrollment. Madrid, however, held many other attractions: the Prado housed paintings by the
venerable Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the
works of El Greco; their elements, like elongated limbs, arresting colors, and mystical visages, are
echoed in Picasso’s œuvre.
Personal life
After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art capital of
Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped
Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night
while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold,
and desperation. Much of his work had to be burned to keep the small room warm. In Madrid in
1901, Picasso and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven
(Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal,
mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. From that
day, he started to sign his work simply Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.
In the early twentieth century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In 1904, in the
middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who became his mistress.[5] Olivier
appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left
Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he called Eva. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva
in many Cubist works.
In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse
quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude
Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911.
Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were
later exonerated.[6]
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920
He maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso was
married twice and had four children by three women. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga
Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet,
Parade, in Rome; and they spent their honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean
art patron Eugenia Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties,
and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo,
who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlova’s
insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a
state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev’s troup,
he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make
several sketches of the composer. In 1927 Picasso met 17 year old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began
a secret affair with her. Picasso’s marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than
divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did
not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova’s
death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a
daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry
her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso’s death.
Dora Maar au Chat, 1941
The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The
two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of
Guernica.
During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city.
Picasso’s artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was not able to show his works during
this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint all the while. Although the Germans
outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the
French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student,
Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude and
Paloma. Unique among Picasso’s women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive
treatment and infidelities. This came as a severe blow to Picasso.
He went through a difficult period after Gilot’s departure, coming to terms with his advancing age
and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young
women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as
buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with
Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.
Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the Madoura Pottery
in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained
together for the rest of Picasso’s life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one
last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with
Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picasso’s encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then
husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children’s rights. Picasso then secretly married
Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.
Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France,
at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time
he was a celebrity, and there was often as much interest in his personal life as his art.
In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo
appearance in Jean Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film
appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed
by Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained
friends for dinner. His final words were “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any
more.”[7] He was interred at Castle Vauvenargues’ park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône.
Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.[8]
Political views
Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to
fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with
cowardice than principle. An article in the New Yorker called him “a coward, who sat out two world
wars while his friends were suffering and dying”.[9] As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was
under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil
War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to
the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco
Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them. He also remained aloof
from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and
being friendly with activists within it.
In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in
Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government.[10] But party
criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso’s interest in communist
politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945
interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: “I am a Communist and my painting is Communist
painting. … But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not
necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.”[11] In 1962, he received the
International Lenin Peace Prize.
Art
Picasso’s work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are
debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the
Rose Period (1905–1907), the African-influenced Period (1908–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912),
and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919).
In 1939–40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, under its director Alfred Barr, a Picasso
enthusiast, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time.
This exhibition lionized the artist, brought into full public view in America the scope of his artistry,
and resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.[12]
Before 1901
Picasso’s training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of
early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most
comprehensive records extant of any major artist’s beginnings.[13] During 1893 the juvenile quality
of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun.[14]
The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First
Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of
14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has
called “without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.”[15]
In 1897 his realism became tinged with Symbolist influence, in a series of landscape paintings
rendered in non naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899–
1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch,
combined with his admiration for favorite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal
version of modernism in his works of this period.[16]
Blue Period
Femme aux Bras Croisés, 1902
For more details on this topic, see Picasso's Blue Period.
Picasso’s Blue Period (1901–1904) consists of somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and bluegreen, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This period’s starting point is uncertain; it may
have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year.[17] Many
paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from this period. In his austere use of color and
sometimes doleful subject matter—prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects—Picasso was
influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in
autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy
allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.[18]
The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind
man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent
theme in Picasso’s works of this period, also represented in The Blindman’s Meal (1903, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of
Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Bloch.
Rose Period
For more details on this topic, see Picasso's Rose Period.
The Rose Period (1904–1906)[19] is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink
colors, and featuring many acrobats and harlequins. The harlequin, a comedic character usually
depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met
Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are
influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French
painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the
1899–1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year
between the two periods.
African-influenced Period
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Museum of Modern Art, New York
For more details on this topic, see Picasso's African Period.
Picasso’s African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his
painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas
developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.
Cubism
Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art
Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with Georges Braque
using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and “analyzed”
them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque’s paintings at this time have many similarities.
Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre, in which cut paper
fragments—often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages—were pasted into compositions,
marking the first use of collage in fine art.
Classicism and surrealism
In the period following the upheaval of World War I, Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style.
This “return to order” is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including André
Derain, Giorgio de Chirico, and the artists of the New Objectivity movement. Picasso’s paintings and
drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Ingres.
During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a common motif in his work. His use of
the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol,
and it appears in Picasso’s Guernica.
Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia
Arguably Picasso’s most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the
Spanish Civil War — Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and
hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, “It isn’t up to the painter to define
the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who
look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”[20]
Guernica hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned
to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madrid’s Reina
Sofía Museum when it opened.
Later works
Picasso sculpture in Chicago
Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. In the 1950s, Picasso’s style changed once
again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of
works based on Velazquez’s painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works by Goya,
Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix.
Nude Woman with a Necklace (1968), Tate
He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge 50-foot-high public sculpture to be built in
Chicago, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of
enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the
figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The
sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967.
Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
Picasso’s final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end
of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more
colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and
hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic
fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. Only
later, after Picasso’s death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract
expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neoexpressionism and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.
Commemoration and legacy
Picasso sculpture in Halmstad
At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art
market what he didn’t need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of
other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had
exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state were
paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the
immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso
inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso
Málaga.
The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso’s early works, created while he was living
in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal Picasso’s firm grounding in classical
techniques. The museum also holds many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth
under his father’s tutelage, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso’s close
friend from his Barcelona days who, for many years, was Picasso’s personal secretary.
The film Surviving Picasso was made about Picasso in 1996, as seen through the eyes of Françoise
Gilot. Anthony Hopkins played Picasso in the movie.
Value of paintings
Some paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world.
Nude on a black armchair sold for USD $45.1 million in 1999 to Les Wexner, who
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then donated it to the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Les Noces de Pierrette sold for more than USD $51 million in 1999.
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Garçon à la pipe sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's on May 4, 2004, establishing
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a new price record.
Dora Maar au Chat sold for USD $95.2 million at Sotheby’s on May 3, 2006.[21]
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Children
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Paulo (February 4, 1921 – June 5, 1975) (Born Paul Joseph Picasso) — with Olga
Khokhlova
Maia (September 5, 1935 – ) (Born Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) — with MarieThérèse Walter
Claude (May 15, 1947 –) (Born Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) — with Françoise Gilot
Paloma (April 19, 1949 – ) (Born Anne Paloma Picasso) — with Françoise Gilot
Notes
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^ Wertenbaker, 9.
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^ Wertenbaker, 11.
^ http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/picasso/destroy.htm
^ a b Wertenbaker, 13.
^ http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/picasso/destroy.htm
^ Time Magazine, STEALING THE MONA LISA, 1911. Consulted on August 15, 2007.
^ http://www.digital-karma.org/culture/quotes/famous-peoples-last-words
accessed online August 15, 2007
^ [1],The Rich Die Richer and You Can too by William D. Zabel, Published 1996 John
Wiley and Sons, p.11. ISBN 0471155322 Accessed online August 15, 2007
^ Fenton, James (2000). Leonardo’s Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists. University of
Chicago Press, 185. ISBN 0226241475.
^ Picasso’s Party Line, ARTnews [2] Retrieved May 31, 2007.
^ (1988) Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views. Da Capo Press, 140. ISBN 0306803305.
^ The MoMA retrospective of 1939–40 — see Michael FitzGerald, Making
Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. (pp.243–62)
^ Cirlot,1972, p.6
^ Cirlot, 1972, p. 14
^ Cirlot, 1972, p.37
^ Cirlot, 1972, p. 87–108.
^ Cirlot, 1972, p.127.
^ Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 304
^ Wattenmaker, Distel, et al.,1993, p. 194
^ Guernica Introduction
^ Picasso portrait sells for $95.2 million. Retrieved on May 4, 2006.
References
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The Museum of Modern Art. Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Ed. William Rubin,
chronology by Jane Fluegel. New York. 1980. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
Becht-Jördens, Gereon; Wehmeier, Peter M. (2003). Picasso und die christliche
Ikonographie. Mutterbeziehung und künstlerische Position. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
ISBN 3-469-01272-2
Cirlot, Juan-Eduardo (1972). Picasso: birth of a genius. New York and Washington:
Praeger.
Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de
Chirico and the New Classicism 1910–1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
Fitzgerald, Michael C. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market
for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.
Eugenio Fernández Granell, Picasso’s Guernica : the end of a Spanish era (Ann Arbor,
Mich. : UMI Research Press, 1981) ISBN 0835712060 9780835712064 9780835712064
0835712060
Ledor, Kobi, MD. “A Guide to Collecting Picasso’s Prints”
Mallen Enrique (2003). The Visual Grammar of Pablo Picasso. Berkeley Insights in
Linguistics & Semiotics Series. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Mallen, Enrique (2005). La Sintaxis de la Carne: Pablo Picasso y Marie-Thérèse
Walter. Santiago de Chile: Red Internacional del Libro.
Nill, Raymond M. “A Visual Guide to Pablo Picasso’s Works”. New York: B&H
Publishers, 1987.
Picasso, Olivier Widmaier. (2004). Picasso: The Real Family Story. Prestel Publ. ISBN
3-7913-3149-3
Rubin, William, ed. (1980) Pablo Picasso, a retrospective. Chronology by Jane
Fluegel. The Museum of Modern Art. New York. ISBN 0-87070-519-9
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Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the
Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7
Wertenbaker, Lael (1967). The World of Picasso. Time–Life Library of Art. Alexandria,
Virginia: Time-Life Books.
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Pablo Picasso
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Pablo Picasso
Official website
On-Line Picasso Project: Comprehensive summary of his life and his work.
Pablo Picasso — Biography, Quotes & Paintings, retrieved June 14 2007.
Poems by Picasso in English translation from Samizdat (poetry magazine)
Cubism, The Big Picture
Museums
Picasso Museum, Paris, (Hotel Salé, 1659)
Guggenheim Museum Biography
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Hilo Art Museum, (Hilo Hawaii, USA)
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Honolulu Academy of Arts
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Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York
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Musée National Picasso (Paris, France)
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Musée Picasso (Antibes, France)
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Museo Picasso Málaga (Málaga, Spain)
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Museu Picasso (Barcelona, Spain)
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Museum Berggruen (Berlin, Germany)
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Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
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National Gallery of Art list of paintings
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Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso>
The Beginning: Childhood and Youth 1881-1901
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 to Don José Ruiz Blasco (1838-1939) and Doña
Maria Picasso y Lopez (1855-1939). The family at the time resided in Málaga, Spain, where Don José,
a painter himself, taught drawing at the local school of Fine Arts and Crafts. Pablo spent the first ten
years of his life there. The family was far from rich, and when 2 other children were born -- Dolorès
("Lola") in 1884 and Concepción ("Conchita") in 1887 -- it was often difficult to make ends meet.
When Don José was offered a better-paid job, he accepted it immediately, and the Picassos moved
to the provincial capital of La Coruna, where they lived for the next four years. In 1892, Pablo
entered the School of Fine Arts there, but it was mostly his father who taught him painting. By 1894
Pablo’s works were so well executed for a boy of his age that his father recognized Pablo’s amazing
talent, and, handing Pablo his brush and palette, declared that he would never paint again.
In 1895 Don José got a professorship at “La Lonja”, the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and the
family settled there. Pablo passed the entrance examination in an advanced course in classical art
and still life at the same school. He was better than senior students doing their final exam projects.
“Unlike in music, there are no child prodigies in painting. What people regard as premature genius is
the genius of childhood. It gradually disappears as they get older. It is possible for such a child to
become a real painter one day, perhaps even a great painter. But he would have to start right from
the beginning. So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never
have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his
naivety. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened
me.” -- Picasso.
In 1896 Pablo’s first large “academic’ oil painting, “The First Communion”, appeared in an exhibition
in Barcelona. His second large oil painting, “Science and Charity” (1897) received honorable mention
in the national exhibition of fine art in Madrid and was awarded a gold medal in a competition at
Málaga. Pablo’s uncle sent him money for further study in Madrid, and the youth passed entrance
examinations for advanced courses at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in the city. However, he
would abandon the classes by that winter. His everyday visits to the Prado seemed much more
important to him. At first, he copied the old masters, trying to imitate their style; later they would be
the source of ideas for original paintings of his own, and he would re-arrange them again and again
in different variations.
Picasso’s time in Madrid, however, came to a sudden end. In summer 1898, catching scarlet fever,
he came back to Barcelona, and then, to recover his health, he travelled to the mountain village of
Horta de Ebro and spent long time there to return home only in spring 1899.
In Barcelona, he frequented Els Quatre Gats (Catalan for "The Four Cats"), a café, where artists and
intellectuals used to meet. He made friends, among others, with the young painter Casagemas, and
the poet Sabartés, who would later be his secretary and lifelong friend. In Quatre Gats Picasso met
vivid representatives of Spanish modernism, including Rusinol and Nonell and he was very
enthusiastic about new directions in art. This was the point when he said farewell to “classicism” and
started his long-lasting search and experiments. His relations with his parents became strained, as
they could not understand and forgive him his "betrayal of classicism".
In October 1900 Picasso and Casagemas left for Paris, the most significant artistic center of the time,
and opened a studio in the Montmartre. The art dealer Pedro Manach offered Picasso his first
contract: 150 francs per month in exchange for pictures. His first Paris picture was “Le Moulin de la
Galette” (Guggenheim Museum, New York). In December, he departed for Barcelona, stopped in
Málaga, and finally arrived in Madrid where he became co-editor of the magazine Arte Joven.
However, by May 1901 he was back in Paris. This restlessnessa and constant travel from one corner
of Europe to another continued throughout his life, and though he would slow his pace in his latter
years, he never did finally settle down.
The Blue and Rose periods 1901-1906
In February 1901 Picasso’s friend Casagemas committed suicide: he shot himself in a Parisian café
because a girl he loved had refused him. His death was a great shock to Picasso, and the painter
would return to it again and again in his art: he painted the Death of Casagemas in color, the Death
of Casagemas again in blue and then “Evocation – The Burial of Casagemas”. In this latter canvas
the compositional and stylistic influence of El Greco’s “The Burial of Count Orgaz” can be traced.
Picasso began to use blue and green almost exclusively. “I began to paint in blue, when I realized
that Casademas had died” Picasso later wrote.
Restless and lonely, the arist moved constantly between Paris and Barcelona, depicting isolation,
unhappiness, despair, misery of physical weakness, old age, and poverty; all of it in shades of blue. In
the allegorical La Vie (1903), in monochrome blue, the man has the face of his deceased friend.
In 1904 Picasso finally settled in Paris, at 13 Rue Ravignan, called “Bateau-Lavoir”. He met Fernande
Olivier, a model, who would be his mistress for the next seven years. He even proposed to her, but
she had to refuse because she was already married. They paid frequent visits to the Circus Médrano,
whose bright pink tent at the foot of the Montmartre shone for miles and was quite close to his
studio. There, Picasso got ideas for his pictures of circus actors. The pub Le Lapin Agile (The Agile
Rabbit) was a meeting place of young artists and authors. In the pub, Picasso got acquainted with
the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. The landlord, Frédé, accepted pictures as payment,
and this made his café attractive for the artists and he acquired a splendid collection of paintings,
including, of course, one by Picasso “At the Lapin Agile”, with Picasso as a harlequin and Frédé as a
guitar player. The picture “Woman with a Crow” shows Frédé’s daughter.
By 1905, Picasso lightened his palette, relieving it with pink and rose, yellow-ochre and gray. His
circus performers, harlequins and acrobats became more graceful, delicate and sensuous. In 1906
the art dealer Ambroise Vollard bought most of Picasso’s “Rose” pictures. This marked the beginning
of Picasso's prosperity: he would never again experience financial worries. Accompanied by
Fernande the painter traveled to Barcelona, then to Gosol in the north of Catalonia, where he
painted “La Toilette”. Deeply impressed by the Iberian sculptures at the Louvre, he began to think
over and experiment with geometrical forms.
Cubism 1907-1917
“Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements
are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today
there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, and an English
book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I
blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?”
-- Picasso "Negro" Period
In 1907, after numerous studies and variations Picasso painted his first Cubist picture - “Les
demoiselles d’Avignon”. Impressed with African sculptures at an ethnographic museum he tried to
combine the angular structures of the “primitive art” and his new ideas about cubism. The critics
immediately dubbed this stage in his work the "Negro" Period, seeing in it only an imitation of
African ethnic art.
“In the Demoiselles d’Avignon I painted a profile nose into a frontal view of a face. I had to depict it
sideways so that I could give it a name, so that I could call it ‘nose’. And so they started talking about
Negro art. Have you ever seen a single African sculpture -- just one -- where a face mask has a profile
nose in it?” Picasso wrote.
Picasso’s new experiments were received very differently by his friends, some of whom were
sincerely disappointed, and even horrified, while others were interested. The art dealer Kahnweiler
loved the Demoiselles and took it for sale. Picasso’s new friend, the artist Georges Braque (18821963), was so enthusiastic about Picasso’s new works that the two painters came together to
explore the possibilities of cubism over several of the following years. In the summer of 1908, the
two began their experiments by going on holidays in the countryside. Afterwards, they found that
they had painted very similar pictures completely independently of each other.
Analytical Cubism
Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table (1909) marks the beginning of Picasso’s “Analytical” Cubism: he
gives up a central perspective and splits forms up into facet-like stereo-metric shapes. The famous
portraits of Fernande, Woman with Pears, and of the art dealers Vollard and Kahnweiller are
fulfilled in the analytical cubist style .
By 1911, Picasso’s relationship with Fernande went through a crisis. He broke up with her and
started a liaison with Eva Gouel (Marcelle Humbert), whom he called “Ma Jolie”.
Synthetic or Collage Cubism
By 1912 the possibilities of analytical cubism seemed to be exhausted. Picasso and Braque began
new experiments. Within a year they were composing still lifes of cut-and-pasted scraps of material,
with only a few lines added to complete the design, such as Still-Life with Chair Caning. These
collages led to synthetic cubism -- paintings with large, schematic patterning, such as The Guitar.
“Cubism has remained within the limits and limitations of painting, never pretending to go beyond.
Drawing, design and color are understood and practiced in cubism in the spirit and manner that are
understood and practiced in other schools. Our subjects might be different, because we have
introduced into painting objects and forms that used to be ignored. We look at our surroundings with
open eyes, and also open minds. We give each form and color its own significance, as we see it; in our
subjects, we keep the joy of discovery, the pleasure of the unexpected; our subject itself must be a
source of interest. But why tell you what we are doing when everybody can see it if they want to?”
wrote Picasso.
World War I (1914-18) changed the life, mood, state of mind, and, of course, art of Picasso. His
fellow French artists, Braque and Derain, were called up into the army at the beginning of the war.
The art dealer Kahnweiler, a German, had to go to Italy, and his gallery was confiscated. Picasso’s
pictures became somber, showing realistic more often, for example Pierrot.
“When I paint a bowl, I want to show you that it is round, of course. But the general rhythm of the
picture, its composition framework, may compel me to show the round shape as a square. When you
come to think of it, I am probably a painter without style. ‘Style’ is often something that ties the artist
down and makes him look at things in one particular way, the same technique, the same formulas,
year after year, sometimes for a whole lifetime. You recognize him immediately, for he is always in
the same suit, or a suit of the same cut. There are, of course, great painters who have a certain style.
However, I always thrash about rather wildly. I am a bit of a tramp. You can see me at this moment,
but I have already changed, I am already somewhere else. I can never be tied down, and that is why I
have no style,” Picasso wrote.
In 1916, the young poet Jean Cocteau brought the Russian ballet impresario Diaghilev and the
composer Erik Satie to meet Picasso in his studio. They asked him to design the décor for their ballet
“Parade”, which was to be performed by Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. The meeting and Picasso’s
affirmative answer would bring major changes to his life in the followng years. In 1917, he traveled
to Rome with Cocteau and spent time with Diaghilev’s ballet company, working on décor for
“Parade”. There, Picasso met Igor Stravinsky and fell in love with the dancer Olga Khokhlova. He
accompanied the ballet group to Madrid and Barcelona because of Olga, and eventually persuaded
her to stay with him.
Between Wars 1918-1936
Classicism and Surrealism
In 1918, Olga and Picasso got married. The young couple moved to an apartment that occupied two
floors at 23 Rue La Boétie, acquired servants, a chauffeur, and began to move in different social
circles, no doubt due to Olga’s influence. The chaotic get-togethers Picasso had with his artist friends
gradually changed into formal receptions. Picasso’s image of himself changed as well, and this was
reflected in the more conventional style he adopted in his art and the way in which he consciously
made use of artistic traditions and ceased to be provocative.
After cubism, Picasso returned to more traditional patterns -- if not exactly classical ones -- and this
period is thus known as his Classicist period. A typical example of this new style is The Lovers. From
time to time, he would return to cubism. His collaboration with the Ballet Russe went on: he worked
on décor for “Le Tricorne” and drew portraits of the dancers. In 1920, he began to work on the décor
for Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella. With the birth of his son Paul (Paolo) (1921), he returned to the
Mother and Child theme again and again: Mother and Child.
In 1921, he painted his Cubist Three Musicians, in which he used a group of people as a cubist
subject for the first time. The three figures are characters from the Italian Commedia dell’Arte
(Pierrot, Harlequin and a monk). Though created after his Cubist period, the picture came to be
regarded as a masterpiece of cubism. “Those who set out to explain a picture are setting out on the
wrong foot. A short time ago Gertrude Stein elatedly informed me that at last she understood what
my painting ‘Three Musicians’ represented. It was a still life!” wrote Picasso.
In 1923, Picasso painted The Pipes of Pan, which is regarded as the most important work of his
“classicist period”. Other interesting works include The Seated Harlequin and Women Running on
the Beach.
“Of all the misfortunes – hunger, misery, being misunderstood by the public – fame is by far the
worst. This is how God chastises the artist. It is sad. It is true,” wrote Picasso
God had chastised Picasso. By the mid-twenties he became so popular that he “had to suffer a public
that was gradually suppressing his individuality by blindly applauding every single picture he
produced.” In addition to this, the artist was having marital problems. His wife Olga, a former ballet
dancer, for whom the attention and admiration of the public was necessary, vital, and natural, could
not understand Picasso's discomfort with his fame.
Picasso tried to preserve his independence by taking an interest in the unknown and the unfamiliar.
He set up a sculptor’s studio near Paris and began to experiment with this new artistic medium. He
produced a series of assemblies with a Guitar theme, using objects such as shirts, floor-rags, nails
and string, as well as sculptures. In 1927, Picasso began an affair with seventeen-year old MarieThérèse Walter, his son Paolo's nurse.
Much of his work after 1927 is fantastic and visionary in character. His Woman with Flower (1932) is
a portrait of Marie-Thérèse, distorted and deformed in the manner of Surrealism. The Surrealism
movement was growing in strength and popularity at the time, and even Picasso could not really
avoid being influenced by this group of Parisian artists, although they, conversely, regarded him as
their artistic stepfather.
“I keep doing my best not to lose sight of nature. I want to aim at similarity, a profound similarity
which is more real than reality, thus becoming surrealist,” Picasso wrote.
The worst time of his life, according to Picasso himself, began in June 1935. Marie-Thérèse was
pregnant with his child, and his divorce from Olga had to be postponed again and again: their
common wealth had become a target for lawyers. During this time of personal financial crisis,
Picasso would add the bull, either dying or snorting furiously and threatening both man and animal
alike, to his artistic arsenal. Being Spanish, Picasso had always been fascinated by bullfights, the socalled “tauromachia”. On October 5th of that year, his second child, a daughter, Maria de la
Concepcion, called Maya, was born.
In 1936, he met Dora Maar, a Yugoslavian photographer. Later, during the war, she became his
constant companion. See Portrait of Dora.
Wartime Experience 1937-1945
“Guernica, the oldest town of the Basque provinces and the center of their cultural traditions, was
almost completely destroyed by the rebels in an air attack yesterday afternoon. The bombing of the
undefended town far behind the front line took exactly three quarters of an hour. During this time
and without interruption a group of German aircraft – Junker and Heinkel bombers as well as Heinkel
fighters – dropped bombs weighing up to 500 kilogrammes on the town. At the same time low-flying
fighter planes fired machine-guns at the inhabitants who had taken refuge in the fields. The whole of
Guernica was in flames in a very short time.”
The Times, April 27, 1937.
The Spanish government had asked Picasso to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris
World Exhibition. He planned to depict the subject “a painter in his studio”, but when he heard
about the events in Guernica, he changed his original plans. After numerous sketches and studies,
Picasso gave his own personal view of the tragedy. His gigantic mural Guernica has remained part of
the collective consciousness of the twentieth century, a forceful reminder of the event. Though
painted for the Spanish government, it wasn't until 1981, after forty years of exile in New York, that
the picture found its way to Spain. This was because Picasso had decreed that it should not become
Spanish property until the end of fascism. In October 1937, Picasso also painted the “Weeping
Woman” as a kind of postscript to “Guernica”.
In 1940, when Paris was occupied by the Nazis, he handed out prints of his painting to German
officers. When they asked asked him “Did you do this?” (referring to the pictures), he replied, “No,
you did”. Whether those world-reknowned military brains were simply unable to perceive the
symbolism of the picture, or whether it was Picasso's fame that stopped them from taking any
action, the painter was not arrested and went on working. During the war, he met a young female
painter, Françoise Gillot, who would later become his third official wife.
With his Charnel House of 1945, Picasso concluded the series of pictures that he had started with
“Guernica”. The connection between the paintings becomes immediately obvious when we consider
the rigidly limited color scheme and the triangular composition of the center. However, in the latter
painting, the nightmare had been superceded by reality. The Charnel House was painted under the
impact of reports from the Nazi concentration camps which had been discovered and liberated. It
wasn't until then, that people realized the atrociousness of the Second World War. It was a time
when the lives of millions of people had been literally pushed aside, a turn of phase which Picasso
expressed rather vividly in the pile of dead bodies in his Charnel House.
After WWII. The Late Works. 1946-1973.
In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso joined the Communist Party and became an active
participant of the Peace Movement. In 1949, the Paris World Peace Conference adopted a dove
created by Picasso as the official symbol of the various peace movements. The USSR awarded
Picasso the International Stalin Peace Prize twice, once in 1950 and for the second time in 1961 (by
this time, the award had been renamed the International Lenin Peace Prize, as a result of
destalinization) . He protested against the American intervention in Korea and against the Soviet
occupation of Hungary. In his public life, he always expressed humanitarian views.
After WWII, Françoise gave birth to two children: Claude (1947) and Paloma (1949). Paloma is the
Spanish word for “dove” -- the girl was named after the peace symbol.
Picasso would not settle down, and more women would come into his life, some coming and going,
like Sylvette David; and some staying longer, like Jacqueline Rogue. Picasso would remain sexually
active and seeking throughout most of his life; it wasn't that he was looking for something better
than what he had had previously; the artist had a passion for the new and untried, evident in his
travels, his art and, of course, his women. For him, it was a way of staying young.
In the summer of 1955, Picasso bought “La Californie”, a large villa near Cannes. From his studio, he
had a view of the enormous garden, which he filled with his sculptures. The south and the
Mediterranean were just right for his mentality; they reminded of Barcelona, his childhood and
youth. There, he painted “Studio ‘La Californie’ at Cannes” (1956) and Jacqueline in the Studio
(1956). By 1958, however "La Californie" had become a tourist attraction. There had been a
constantly increasing stream of admirers and of people trying to catch a glimpse of the painter at his
work, and Picasso, who disliked public attention, chose to move house. Picasso bought the Chateau
Vauvenargues, near Aix-en-Provence, and this was reflected in his art with an increasing reduction of
his range of colors to black, white and green.
The mass media turned Picasso into a celebrity, and the public deprived him of privacy and wanted
to know his every step, but his later art was given very little attention and was regarded as no more
than the hobby of an aging genius who could do nothing but talk about himself in his pictures.
Picasso’s late works are an expression of his final refusal to fit into categories. He did whatever he
wanted in art and did not arouse a word of criticism.
With his adaptation of “Las Meninas” by Velászquez and his experiments with Manet’s Luncheon on
the Grass, was Picasso still trying to discover something new, or was he just laughing at the public,
its stupidity and its inability to see the obvious.
A number of elements had become characteristic in his art of this period: Picasso’s use of simplified
imagery, the way he let the unpainted canvas shine through, his emphatic use of lines, and the
vagueness of the subject. In 1956, the artist would comment, referring to some schoolchildren:
“When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to
draw like them.”
In the last years of his life, painting became an obsession with Picasso, and he would date each
picture with absolute precision, thus creating a vast amount of similar paintings -- as if attempting to
crystallize individual moments of time, but knowing that, in the end, everything would be in vain.
Pablo Picasso passed away at last on April 8, 1973, at the age of 92. He was buried on the grounds of
his Chateau Vauvenargues.
“The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps
towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and
with the hope that it would always remain in the present. I have never had time for the idea of
searching. Whenever I wanted to express something, I did so without thinking of the past or the
future. I have never made radically different experiments. Whenever I wanted to say something, I
said it the way I believed I should. Different themes inevitably require different methods of
expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one
wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.” -- Picasso
Additional reading:
The Ultimate Picasso. By Brigitte Leal, Christine Piot, Marie-Laure Bernadac, Jean Leymarie. 2000,
Harry N Abrams.
Life With Picasso. By Francoise Gilot, Carlton Lake. 1989. Anchor.
Picasso Erotique. By Pablo Picasso, Annie Le Brun, Pascal Quinard, Jean Clair. 2001, Prestel, USA.
Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece That Changed the World by
Russell Martin. E P Dutton, 2002.
Matisse and Picasso: The Story of their Rivalry and Friendship by Jack D. Flam. Westview Press,
2003.
Picasso: The Art of the Poster Catalogue Raisonne by Marc Gundel, Rene Hirner, Pablo Picasso,
Kunstmuseum Heidenheim. Prestel USA, 2000.
Picasso's Women: Eight Monologues (Oberon Books) by Brian McAvera. Theatre Communications
Group, 1999.
Picasso and the Invention of Cubism by Pepe Karmel, Pablo Picasso. Yale Univ Pr, 2003.
Matisse, Picasso, Miro--as I Knew Them by Rosamond Bernier. Knopf, 1991.
Pasted from <http://abcgallery.com/P/picasso/picassobio.html#The_Blue_and_Rose>
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Fauvism, Expressionism and Cubism, Oh My! Part 3: Cubism
CUBISM(1907-1930)
Like Expressionism, it was influenced by an interest in African and Oceanic art objects and making
paintings two-demensional surface holding a design and not a presentation of something. It wasn't
concerned with emotion or personal feelings. Mainly, it just breaked people and stuff down into
little blocks and into a million different pieces and then reconstucting them. There are two types of
cubism....
1.
Analytical Cubism, which is shattering of fragments and then reconstructing them, as
I explained earlier.
2.
Synthetic Cubism, which uses collage, stencils and glue to produce a surface image.
And know the pictures
Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, by Pablo Picasso
This painting marked the beginning of cubist painting. The influence of the African Mask, which can
be seen with the two figures on the right, forced Picasso to rework the entire geometry of the
frame. The critics called it "Cubism" because of it's geometric emphasis. And on another note, the
woman in this picture actually existed but they didn't look like this. At least I hope they didn't,
because it would be very hard being a prostitute that looked like that.
Nude Descending a Staircase, by Marcel Duchamp
This was a very controversial painting that was completly misunderstood by the American public and
critics, possibly because it dosn't look like a nude descending a staircase. One critic called it shingles.
The thing about this painting is that it shows the various stages of a nude descending a staircase,
each one frozen in place at the same time.
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, by Pablo Picasso
If the painting looks a little grey and dull, that's because most paintings by Cubism are grey and dull.
This shows a fully developed style in Picasso by 1910.
Guitar, by Pablo Picasso
This is an example of Synthetic Cubism, which my notes say "grew with Picasso's work with George
Braque" whoever he was. This statue, made from sheet metal and wire, was a radical departure
from making statues with stone or wood. It was also a fore-runner for modern sculpture which
would be constructed as compared to made from stone or wood.
Pasted from <http://worldhead.blogspot.com/2007/10/fauvism-expressionism-and-cubism-oh-my_8429.html>
Braque Georges
vendredi 7 mars 2008
11:59
The influence of Cezanne, reducing the use of the colours, playing with ndifferent shades of the
colour, reducing forms and shapes to geometrical elements, thus curving the road to the first period
of Cubism, the so-called Analytical Cubism, the style based on intergrating the subject in the
background playing with monchrome brownish
"Maisons à l'Estaque 1908
"Broc et violon" 1909-191O
The subject, the violin, is highly integrated into the background, everytihng is reduced in geometrical
forms, instead of the top of the instrument, which along with the sound holes and strings give us an
idea of musical instrument, here we can notice that the subject is no longer coherent element, it is
split, though not completely. The use of the colour is reduced, the painter is playing with different
shades of the colour in order to point out the subject, which is besides marked with brown colour,
which is giving us the idea of wood
"La Guitare" 1912
This painting is of a high interest to us due to the fact that it is the example of the ultimate state of
the analytical cubism, we still can recognize the features of the man, but not without the help of the
title; the subject is dissappearing in the background.
A new fact that wasn't observed before is the use of the letters, which is leading us straight to the
second period of the Cubism, the so-called Synthetic Cubism, where the artist are going to integrate
the written elements into the paintings, as well as wall-papers, newspapers, in order to give the idea
of a subject, which is dissappearing
Le portugais 1911
La guitare is a representative of the Synthetical Cubism, we can observe soe lines drawn which are
suggesting the idea of the room; we can seee some lettters printed, which is representing the
newspaper and we have just some lines suggesting the guitar, which normally is supposed to be the
subject of the painting; to crown, Braque is sticking the piece of paper representing the wood, which
suggesting the materil of the guitar
"Still life on a table" 1914
Suggesting the idea of wood by sticking the pieces of paper; and a piece of a newspaper fragment,
which is supposed to give us an idea of the table and the box on it.
"Man with a guitar" 1914
This is the excellent example of the synthetical cubism, we can se the mouth of the man playing
which are enclosed into geometrical forms, as well as we can observe that the representation of
thee man is the "translation" movements
SITES
RAQUE Georges
1882-1963
biographie
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16
SES OEUVRES
L'Estaque
Terrace of Hotel Mistral
Houses at l'Estaque
Large Nude
Musical Instruments
Viaduct at l'Estaque
Fruitdish
Castle at La Roche-Guyon
Fishing Boats
Harbor in Normandy
Bottles and Fishes
Violin and Candlestick
Violin and Pitcher
Man with a Guitar
Le Portugais
Fruitdish Quotidien du midi
The Fruitdish
Fruitdish and Glass
Man with a Violin
Still Life BACH
Still Life with a violin
Still Life with Harp and Violin
Bottle, Newspaper .....
Fruit Dish
Pedestal Table
Tenora
Violin and Pipe, Le Quotidien
Woman with a Guitar
Glass, carafe and Newspapers
Still Life on a table Gillette
Fruit on a Tablecloth ....
Black Fish
Interior with Palette
La Roche Guyon
Poem in Each Book
Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet
Billiard Table under light
Sausage
Leaves in the Colour of Light
Philodendron
Nature morte au compotier
Deux Oiseaux
Sunflowers
Studio VIII
Couple d'Oiseaux
Plums, pears, nuts and knife
Guitare
Derniers Messages
Boat on a Shore in Brittany
Femme à la Mandoline
Livres Illustres
Gueridon
Les oiseaux
Hommage à Pierre Reverdy
La bouteille de rhum
Feuilles Couleurs Lumières
The Green Basin
Litographie
Sur 4 murs
Théogonie
Le Guéridon
Birds on Blue
La Forme
Port of l'Estaque
L'oiseau bleu et gris
Oiseaux
L'oiseau bleu et gris
Renaissance
Dans Deux Choses
Avec l'Age
Guéridon
Barque sur la Plage
Conformisme
J'Aime la Règle
Profil à la palette
Forme
Tire d'Ailes
Barque Echouée
Bord de Mer
Bird
Barque D27
Two Birds
Purple Plums
L'Echo
L'Oiseau et son Ombre
Astre et l'Oiseau
Poem in Each Book
Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet
Still Life with Grapes and Clarinet
Leaves on the Colour of light
Leaves in the Colour of Light
Nature Morte au Compotier
The Green Basin
Feuilles Couleurs Lumières
Birds on Blue
Two Birds
HAUTE-LOIRE
CANTAL
ALLIER
AUVERGNE
ECRIVEZ-MOI :
jackie.bourneton@ac-clermont.fr
Pasted from <http://papy43-peintres.blogspot.com/2007/09/braque-georges-1882-1963-biographie.html>
About cubism
jeudi 13 mars 2008
10:37
A New Approach to the World
The Artists and their Works
Georges Braque
• Le Viaduc à L'Estaque, 1908
• Les Usines du Rio-Tinto à L'Estaque, 1910
• Compotier et cartes, 1913
Pablo Picasso
• Le guitariste, 1910
Juan Gris
• Le livre, 1911
• Le petit déjeuner, 1915
Fernand Léger
• La couseuse, 1909-10
• La noce, 1911
• Contrastes de formes, 1913
Albert Gleizes
• Paysage à Toul, 1915
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
• Le Cheval majeur, 1914-1976
Henri Laurens
• Bouteille et verre, 1918
Chronology
References / Bibliography
A NEW APPROACH TO THE WORLD
Cubism is without a doubt the most highly influential movement in the history of modern art. A
descendant of Cézanne’s research on the creation of a pictorial space that is no longer a mere
imitation of reality, and ‘primitive’ art that challenges the obvious of Western tradition, Cubism
disrupts the notion of representation in art. According to art historian John Golding, who specialises
in the movement, Cubism is an absolutely original pictorial language, a totally new approach to the
world, and a conceptualised aesthetic theory. So one can understand how it was able to give new
direction to all of modern art.
Through several phases of exploration, the protagonists of the movement initially examined the
unity of the canvas and the treatment of two-dimensional volumes. This was the first phase of
Cubism, known as Facet or Cézanne Cubism, from 1908 to 1910. Once the painting had gained
autonomy, the issue of space became clearer, evolving into a kind of deconstruction of the
perceptive process. Thus, the movement’s development from 1910 to 1912 is often referred to as
Analytical Cubism. After verging on abstraction and hermetism, the artists reintroduced readable
signs, particularly by introducing everyday objects, newspaper and papier collé to the canvas,
steering Cubism towards an aesthetic reflection on the different levels of reference to reality. This
final stage was referred to as Synthetic Cubism.
The first two phases were led by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, neighbours at the BateauLavoir complex of artists’ studios in Montmartre who worked closely together. They were then
joined by Juan Gris, who began painting in the Cubist style in 1911, and sculptor Henri Laurens in
1915 who further developed their research.
But Cubism also influenced the young generation of artists in the nineteen tens, whose first
artworks portrayed their interpretation of the movement’s contributions. Robert Delaunay,
Fernand Léger, Albert Gleizes, the Duchamp brothers (Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Villon,
Marcel Duchamp) were given an impetus that led them to great discoveries.
The influence of Cubism was felt throughout Europe, spilling over into both ready-mades (1) and
abstract art (2). Piet Mondrian’s abstract artwork, Russian Constructivism, Kasimir Malevitch’s
Suprematism, and even Futurism, which would rival Cubism, are all indebted to the innovations first
established by Braque and Picasso.
--> (1) Consult the file : Marcel Duchamp (en)
/ L'oeuvre de Marcel Duchamp (fr)
--> (2) Consult the file : La naissance de l’art abstrait
THE ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS
The artworks selected for this dossier on Cubism are based on the Museum Collection files that are
already on line. Consult the dossiers listed for additional information.
Georges Braque
Argenteuil (Val-d'Oise), 1882 – Paris, 1963
Georges Braque, Le Viaduc à L'Estaque, (The Viaduct at L'Estaque), 1908, Paris
Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 59 cm,
Payment in kind, 1984
AM 1984-353
© Adagp, Paris 2007
Attention ! The Internet copyrights of this work only have been obtained in the frame of this file
dedicated to the Cubism.
The little fishing harbour of L’Estaque near Marseilles drew a number of artists in the late 19th
century and early 20th century. Cézanne sought refuge there during the war of 1870 and then
returned to sojourn on several occasions. Braque followed in his footsteps, heading there for the
first time in 1906, and then again in 1908 after having seen a major posthumous retrospective on
the Aixois painter at the Salon d’Automne. During an interview, he confided that he went there
“with a pre-conceived idea… my first paintings of L’Estaque were already in my mind before my
departure”.
Among the artworks created during his second stay in the summer of 1908, Le Viaduc à L’Estaque
bears witness to the homage to Cézanne from which Braque developed his own painting style.
In this painting, a concern for constructing a space specific to the canvas, and not bound to a
faithful imitation of reality, drove the artist to eliminate details, to simplify the shapes of houses and
reduce them to cubes. Braque had no doubt read the famous passage of Cézanne’s correspondence
with Emile Bernard, published in 1907: “Let me repeat what I told you here: deal with nature as
cylinders, spheres and cones”.
Braque took Cézanne’s invitation to represent shapes geometrically as an agenda. Exhibited among
others of the same series the following autumn in Paris, this painting caused art critic Louis
Vauxcelles to echo one of Matisse’s witticisms and describe Braque’s artwork as being composed of
“little cubes”, thereby inaugurating a new style he coined “Cubism”.
Georges Braque, Les Usines du Rio-Tinto à L'Estaque, automne 1910
Oil on canevas, 65 x 54 cm
Gift from Mr. and Mrs. André Lefèvre, 1952
AM 3973 P
© Adagp, Paris 2007
Attention ! The Internet copyrights of this work only have been obtained in the frame of this file
dedicated to the Cubism.
Also painted at L’Estaque, this artwork holds almost nothing of a singular landscape. The location is
no longer recognisable, the image strays from the motif. It could have been painted anywhere. As of
1909, Braque ceased working outside, turning away from picturesque circumstance to become, like
Picasso at the time, increasingly interested in the construction of a unified, homogenous space
proper to the painting.
“What really drew me – and this was the main direction of Cubism – ”, said Braque to art historian
Dora Vallier, “was the materialisation of this new space I could feel. (…) The first Cubist painting was
all about the search for space. As for colour, the light was all that interested us. Light and space are
two things that are connected (…). I used fragmentation to establish space and the movement of the
space and I could only introduce the object once I had created the space. (…) For Fauves, it was
about light, for Cubists it was space.”
In Les Usines du Rio Tinto, Braque renounces the immediate, apparently natural and automatic,
perception of space that perspective reproduces. Using this familiar landscape as a starting point, he
works on the intellectual reconstruction at play in perception: forming a single image from a
multiplicity of small perceptions grasped by the body in movement. The painting becomes a tool
for analysing the perception of reality, whence the term Analytical Cubism for the artworks of this
period.
Georges Braque, Compotier et cartes (Fruit Dish and Cards) , début 1913, Paris
Former title: Composition de l’As de Trèfle, Nature morte aux cartons à jouer, Nature morte au jeu
de cartes, Les deux cartes à jouer
Oil, heightened with pencil and charcoal on canvas, 81 x 60 cm
Donation from Paul Rosenberg, 1947
AM 2701 P
© Adagp, Paris 2007
Attention ! The Internet copyrights of this work only have been obtained in the frame of this file
dedicated to the Cubism.
By 1911-1912, Braque and Picasso understood that their painting had become less and less
readable, bordering on abstraction.
That is the path that artists such as Robert Delaunay (1) would take, while the pioneers refocused
their work on the issue of painting’s connection with reality. They reintroduced signs so that
comparisons could be made between the space of the representation and reality.
In 1912, they even started to incorporate elements taken directly from reality. By introducing, for
example, a piece of oilcloth in Nature morte à la chaise cannée (Still Life with Chair-Caning), Picasso
uses this trompe-l’œil to mean that the artist is not a slave to reproducing reality (2).
In Compotier et cartes, Braque takes this a step further. He draws a cluster of grapes that evokes
classic representation; he then adds a few playing cards to emphasise the Cubist practice of cutting
up reality into volumeless facets, and paints – not “faux wood” – but rather faux “faux wood”. In
other artworks, he imitates wood, or glues wallpaper as “faux wood”. Here, he oversteps another
boundary by imitating paper that imitates wood. Cubism thus results in a sophisticated reflection on
the different possible levels of reference to reality.
--> (1) See the file : Futurisme, Rayonnisme, Orphisme. Les avant-gardes avant 1914
Biography
George Braque’s father, an artisan decorator in Argenteuil, taught him the techniques of
trompe-l’œil, faux wood and faux marble, which were decisive elements in Cubist
preoccupations.
He studied painting at the Académie Humbert in Paris. After discovering the Fauves at
the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, he embarked upon avant-garde work that brought
him into the circles of the young Parisian painters. That was how, in 1907, he found
himself in Picasso’s studio during the creation of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Inspired by
the canvas, Braque painted his large Baigneuse (Bather), finished in 1908, which marked
a turning point and lay the foundation for Cubism: the figure is deformed, beiges and
greys make their appearance, the background is comprised of sections of angular cutouts. Much less violent than Picasso’s Demoiselles, this canvas triggered the complex
pictorial exploration that would occupy Braque and Picasso in the years to come.
1908 was also the year of his first solo exhibition. The Kahnweiler gallery in Paris
displayed a series of paintings done during the summer at L’Estaque, particularly Le
Viaduc à L’Estaque. The canvases, dubbed “Cubist” by critic Louis Vauxcelles, set out the
problematics of space based on the legacy of Cézanne. Until 1910, Braque worked in
close collaboration with Picasso, which brought their artwork to the threshold of
abstraction. Then, in 1911, he began reintroducing more readable elements, first letters,
then papier collé, then trompe-l’œil techniques.
His Cubist adventure with Picasso came to an end in 1914, when Braque was called to
war. Upon his return, he drew closer to Gris and began what was like a second career,
deriving conclusions from Cubism, without limiting himself to them. In the twenties, he
reintroduced colour to his still lifes, while pursuing his reflection on space and the
inbetweenness that connects objects.
In 1948, he was awarded first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale.
Pablo Picasso
Malaga, 1881 – Mougins, 1973
Picasso, Le Guitariste (The Guitarist), summer 1910
Assigned title: Le joueur de guitare (The Guitar Player)
Oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm
Gift from Mr and Mrs André Lefèvre, 1952
AM 3970 P
© Succession Picasso, Paris 2007
Painted during the summer of 1910 while Picasso was on holiday at Cadaques, this canvas, as
though drenched by the Catalonian sun, uses distinctively Cubist means to evoke the staccato
rhythms of music. Conjuring up the sound of frenzied guitar playing, the lines that articulate the
canvas transform it into an artwork that moves away from figuration to become an almost abstract
image.
The facets that broke up the volumes in Picasso’s previous works are fewer in number and pared
down in shape. They no longer appear as an outcome of decomposition, but assert themselves and
structure the canvas with a vigorous architecture of lines and angles.
That said, some elements help clearly identify the guitarist figure. His head perched on the cylinder,
at the top of the painting, his shoulders, his arms, right down to the neck of the guitar at the centre,
all these clues attest the fact that Picasso, just like Braque, refused to create a painting with no
connection to reality. In his later works, Picasso would invent all kinds of signs that, each in their
own way, made reference to reality.
--> For others works of the painter in the cubism period, see the file : Pablo Picasso (en)
or Pablo Picasso (fr)
Biography
Of Andalusian origin, Pablo Ruiz Picasso grew up in the South of Spain and was taught
drawing and painting at an early age by his father, who was himself a painter.
A brilliant student at the Fine Arts Academy in Barcelona, he moved to Paris in 1904
where he struck up friendships with poets Max Jacob and Pierre Mac Orlan, and above
all with a man who would play a central role in the history of Cubism, Guillaume
Apollinaire.
He also met Matisse, who introduced him to Negro art. This statuary art, blended with
forms from Iberian and Catalan painting, sparked his in-depth reflection on the manner
of rendering volume.
To shed some light on these issues, motivated by the Cézanne retrospective of 1907,
Picasso started to create the painting that founded all modern art, Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon. Although, from a certain point of view, this painting is in the continuity of
nude iconography, particularly following the bather theme of Ingres and Cézanne, it
nevertheless makes a radical break from painting as imitation. Even though, as John
Golding points out, Les Demoiselles is not, strictly speaking, a Cubist painting, since
Cubism is a form of realism, and insofar as it is a detached, objective reinterpretation of
the outside world, a classic art form, Picasso’s painting is nevertheless the logical
starting point for the history of Cubism.
After this painting, Picasso and Braque embarked upon an adventure. Together, they
moved Cubism from the Cézanne phase to an analytical period of extreme exploration,
before coming back to more readable creations with Synthetic Cubism.
The outbreak of war brought an end to their collaboration. Since Picasso was of Spanish
nationality, he was not called to war. Braque, on the other hand, had to join his
regiment, as did Derain, Léger and even Apollinaire.
Picasso’s wartime research brought about a radical change in style, focusing once again
on classic figuration. This new direction was unveiled to the public on the drop curtain
of the ballet Parade in 1917. Much later, in the fifties, Picasso fully renewed with Cubism
with the creation of his cut metal sculptures.
Juan Gris
Madrid, 1887 – Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), 1927
Juan Gris, Le livre (The book), 1911
Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm
Gift from Louise and Michel Leiris, 1984
AM 1984-518
© Public domain
This small painting is one of Gris’ first steps towards Cubism, in which he methodologically studies
various volumes, as though he were taking up painting from the beginning or, more precisely, what
constitutes a beginning for Cubism, Cézanne’s teachings.
Gris drew on Cézanne’s theme of a modest still life, seen from a slightly higher vantage point, and
thus playing with the different planes that form the background of the painting. But like his Cubist
companions, here Gris separates the issues surrounding mise en espace from other profoundly
Cézannian concerns, such as the constituent power of colour.
Gris’ still life is in fact constructed in monochrome, as though colour had to wait until the study of
volume was far enough advanced before it could be taken into consideration again. Gris would not
hesitate to reintroduce it once he had found his own Cubist style. As early as 1912, for example, in
Le Portrait de Picasso, blue takes hold of the facets that represent his friend’s jacket.
--> To see Le Portrait de Pablo Picasso, 1912, The Art Institute of Chicago
Juan Gris, Le petit déjeuner (the breakfirst), 1915
Oil and charcoal on canvas, 92 x 73 cm
Purchase, 1947
AM 2678 P
© Public domain
When the war broke out, Juan Gris took refuge at Collioure (France) with Matisse, and his contact
with the artist is undoubtedly what helped him fully rediscover the sensual side to painting through
the effects of colour.
Ultramarine blue invades the painting through the open window, letting in the air from outside, and
forms a stark contrast with the usual confined spaces of Cubism. This bright, fresh blue illuminates
the faux red wood and the green rug in the dining room.
In such a way, the morning still life with the bowl, the coffeepot, the coffee mill and the newspaper
expresses vitality and great readability. Even though the image is composed of cut-outs,
superimpositions, folded planes and fragmented objects, it seems simple and infused with a
dynamic quality. Thanks to Gris, Cubism renewed with praise for life.
Biography
A native of Madrid, Juan Gris arrived in Paris in 1907, where he used his background as
an illustrator to make ends meet. He set up in a studio at the Bateau-Lavoir complex,
near Braque and his fellow countryman, Picasso. He followed the development of their
work right from 1907, but did not immediately paint in the Cubist style himself. His first
artworks were Art Deco gouaches, and then more naturalist paintings.
Gris adopted the Cubist style in 1911, but without taking the methods to such an
extreme conclusion. He plunged back into the study of Cézanne, methodically returning
to the basics of Cubism. In particular, Gris carried on with the high vantage points so
dear to Cézanne.
But this return to Cézanne was done through the previously established Cubist
preoccupations. Gris renewed with Cézanne to answer what were already highly
elaborate questions, such as the treatment of space between objects.
However, this return to the roots was not Gris’ only contribution to the movement. As
an illustrator, he grew accustomed to simplifying shapes and producing clearly readable
drawings. Under the influence of Matisse, he reintroduced sparkling colours that
restored the painting’s sensual side. In such a way, he gave Cubism a clarity and serenity
that made it easier for the public to understand.
Gris remained true to his focus on the object in space until his death at the early age of
40.
Fernand LÉger
Argentan (orne), 1881 – Gif-sur-Yvette (Essonne), 1955
Fernand Léger, La couseuse (The Sewer), 1909-1910
Assigned title: La Mère de l’artiste (The Artist’s Mother)
Oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm
Gift from Louise and Michel Leiris, 1984
AM 1984-578
© Adagp, Paris 2007
This painting shows the founding role Cubism played in Fernand Léger’s work. Indeed, for an entire
generation of artists, Cubism served as a base from which to reinvent painting. Here, Léger follows
Cézanne’s advice and treats the figure in a geometric manner. He attempts an intimist subject, since
the model is his mother.
But contrary to Cézanne, he abandons colour and creates a painting in the grey beige tones typical
of Cubism. This work taught him how to control volume, which he treated more like a mass of
fragments, as opposed to the tubes found on a number of occasions in his later work.
Fernand Léger, La noce (The Wedding), 1911
Former title: Les Noces, Composition aux personnages
Oil on canvas, 257 x 206 cm
Donated by Alfred Flechtheim, 1937
AM 2146 P
© Adagp, Paris 2007
Created in 1911, La Noce reveals a change in direction in the artist’s work, and in his focus, similar to
that of the young Puteaux painters he kept company with. In his large-scale paintings – contrary to
the intimist still lifes of Braque, Picasso and Gris during the same period -, colour makes a comeback,
perhaps as an influence of Delaunay.
Léger’s wedding theme requires a number of characters and, by its very nature, calls for a
monumental approach. On either side of a large, central, white wave that evokes the bridal gown, a
procession of figures are jumbled together, overlapping one another. A hand, an arm, a hat emerge
from the hotchpotch here and there. Snatches of landscape are visible on the sides, as though
relegated there by the surging crowd.
Between the planes that structure the pictorial surface, only a few trees and houses recall the
Cubism of Braque and Picasso. In this painting, the tumult that characterised Fernand Léger’s work
until the early twenties was already well established.
Fernand Léger, Contrastes de formes (Contrasts of Forms), 1913
Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm
Gift from Mr and Mrs André Lefèvre, 1952
AM 3304 P
© Adagp, Paris 2007
As of 1913, the Cubist fragmentation of forms in Léger’s work transformed into a systematic search
for opposition of pictorial elements, in an effort to make a distinctive dynamic spring forth from the
painting.
This exploration produced a series of artworks entitled “Contrasts of Forms” (some have a specific
title, such as Le Réveille matin, 1914), an abridged version of “contrasts of forms and colours”,
covering an “opposition of values, lines and opposite colours
In this 1913 painting, there is at once an opposition of straight and curved lines, an opposition of
shapes between cones and cylinders, an opposition of primary colours amongst themselves and,
lastly, an opposition of values among black, white and colours.
Far from being merely formal research, Contrastes de formes allowed Léger to take up a theme he
would always hold dear. He wanted to use these compositions to attain a visual intensity
equivalent to the intensity of life, which explains the purposefully rushed look to these paintings.
But although Léger produced abstract art with Contrastes de formes, he would not continue down
this path. His search for pictorial intensity would then renew with figuration and exalt more
precisely modern life.
Biography
After studying architecture at Caen between 1897 and 1899, Fernand Léger learned
painting in Paris, at the Académie Julian in particular. During this time, he also worked at
an architect’s office and retouching photographs for a photographer, two fields that
would leave a lasting mark on his artwork.
He painted in the Impressionist style until the Cézanne retrospective of 1907, which led
him to explore the rendering of volume. Around 1909, he set up at La Ruche studio
complex in the Montparnasse quarter, where he met avant-garde painters like Robert
Delaunay and Marc Chagall, and poets like Max Jacob. He discovered the Cubism of
Braque and Picasso through Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, but was drawn more to the
Duchamp brothers and the Puteaux group.
His first solo exhibition took place at the Kahnweiler gallery in Paris in 1912. By 1913, his
painting was already moving towards abstraction through the theory of contrasts he
shared with Delaunay.
Even though he was conscripted in 1914, he continued to paint. Upon his return from
war in 1917, colour invaded his paintings that celebrated technique and modern life. Le
Cirque (1918) and Les Disques dans la ville (1920) bear witness to his infatuation with
machines and his trust in man, two omnipresent themes in his work.
Albert Gleizes
Paris, 1881 – Avignon (Vaucluse), 1953
Albert Gleizes, Paysage à Toul (Landscape at Toul), 1915
Brown ink, heightened with white gouache on paper
12.8 x 26 cm
S.D.T.B.DR.: AlbGleizes/Toul-15
Gift from Mr and Mrs Livengood, 1954
AM 1890 D
© Adagp, Paris 2007
Gleizes created this drawing when he was conscripted in Lorraine, at Toul. His difficult living
conditions did not hamper his production. Rather, they drove him to create sketches in which his
painting is simplified to abstraction. In Paysage à Toul, which conveys the architecture of a bridge
over the Moselle River, he imposes upon Cubism a demand for pure geometric shapes.
In this investigation, bringing space into play does not conflict with perspective. There is even an
illusion of volume, which Gleizes promotes in his writings. There is in fact a suggestion of three
dimensions through the arrangement of the different planes. The way he treats space is not
controversial as with Braque and Picasso, who renounced the conventions of perspective. Gleizes
brings us Cubism turned classic.
Biography
Paris-born Albert Gleizes first learned the decoration trade from his father, who had a
small studio. A self-taught painter inspired by Impressionism, he exhibited his artworks
in 1903 and 1904 at the Salon d’Automne. In 1906, he founded a utopian community of
artists and writers in Créteil who explored themes of modernity following the guild
revival in England.
He discovered nascent Cubism through young painters like Jean Metzinger and Robert
Delaunay, who he met around 1908, and who contributed to the development of his
painting in increasingly geometric shapes. He then encountered Fernand Léger, who had
a very similar style: he painted a few large canvases with tubular figures. He did not
make acquaintance with Picasso until 1911. In 1912, he and Metzinger published Du
Cubisme, the first theoretical work on the movement, and he was one of the artists
behind the Section d’Or, a major Cubist exhibition at the Galerie La Boétie in Paris.
Called to service when the war broke out, he spent a year at Toul. He was then
discharged and thus able to leave France for New York, where he met up with Marcel
Duchamp and Francis Picabia, who he had known since the founding of the Section d’Or.
When he returned to Paris after the war, he presented his works at several exhibitions.
In 1926, he retired to Isère, where he founded a community of religious painters and
artisans.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Damville (Eure), 1876 – Cannes (Alpes-maritimes), 1918
Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Le Cheval majeur (The Great Horse), 1914-1976
Sculpture. Bronze with black patina, 150 x 97 x 153 cm
Cast by: Susse fondeur Paris
S. D. DED. on the back of the base: R. DUCHAMP-VILLON / 1914 / EPREUVE DU MUSEE
NATIONAL D'ART MODERNE / Susse fondeur Paris
Purchase, 1976
AM 1977-206
© Public domain
This sculpture, created following a number of sketches that pared down its shape, represents a
hybrid between the horse and the machine, between the biological and the mechanical. The
animal’s silhouette is composed of alternating rounded shapes and more rectilinear parts
reminiscent of rods and pistons. The sculpture could be considered an illustration of the expression
“horsepower”.
In such a way, Duchamp-Villon praises the power of the horse in a manner akin to Futurism, an
aggressive artistic movement that exalted the machine (1). In 1913, the work of Futurist painter and
sculptor Boccioni was presented in Paris, which may have had an influence on Duchamp-Villon, just
as it influenced his brother Marcel for the representation of movement in Nu descendant l’escalier
and Le jeune homme triste dans un train (2).
This sculpture thus sets off a fusion between vitality and mechanical power, at the same time as a
fusion between the two main avant-garde movements of the nineteen tens.
--> (1) See the file : Futurisme, Rayonnisme, Orphisme. Les avant-gardes avant 1914
--> (2) See the file : (1) Consult the file : Marcel Duchamp (en)
/ L'oeuvre de Marcel Duchamp (fr)
Biography
Born at Damville near Rouen (France), Raymond Duchamp-Villon was brother to Jacques
Villon and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he worked closely in the beginning. He gave
himself over to sculpture after a long illness that forced him to cease his studies in
medicine.
He was quick to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne in 1905, but until the beginning of the
nineteen tens, his artworks remained rather conventional, following in the wake of
Rodin’s exploration of the fragmented body.
Then, with artworks like Baudelaire, and Maggy in 1911, he produced more massive
volumes that conveyed great power. That same year, he and his brothers created the
Section d’Or group in Puteaux, which soon grew to include Robert Delaunay, Fernand
Léger and Albert Gleizes. Their group formed the second generation of Cubist artists.
Before being called to service for the war, he created his most famous piece, Le Cheval
majeur, which remained in its original plaster state and was not cast in bronze until
much later. Stricken by typhoid fever, he died in 1918.
Henri Laurens
Paris, 1885 - Paris, 1954
Henri Laurens, Bouteille et verre (Bottle and Glass), 1918
Assemblage
Polychromed wood and sheet iron, 62 x 34 x 21 cm
Gift from Louise and Michel Leiris, 1984
AM 1984-569
© Adagp, Paris 2007
Attention ! The Internet copyrights of this work only have been obtained in the frame of this file
dedicated to the Cubism.
Henri Laurens pursued the initial exploration on volume by Braque and especially Picasso, carrying
on with the themes and materials they invented, such as the treatment of the transparency and
reflection of glass with opaque materials (see Picasso’s 1914 Verres d’absinthe series).
Like Picasso, Laurens worked on the effects of intersecting planes that give shape to the main lines
of the bottle and its reflections. He diversified his materials, using wood and sheet metal to create
tactile variations. And, above all, he insisted upon diversity of colour, which he felt provided the
sculpture with its own light.
But, unlike Picasso, he did not work with found materials or scrap. His treatment of volume broke
with the spontaneity of the first Cubist sculptures to offer a more structured art of assemblage, one
that paved the way for other movements like the Constructivism of Gabo and Pevsner.
Biography
A native of Paris, Henri Laurens was first trained in ornamental structure and practised
traditional stone carving directly on building sites, a technique he would return to in the
twenties. Likewise, he retained an interest in medieval, roman and gothic sculpture.
Alongside this work, he took drawing lessons and created sculptures in the manner of
Rodin. He thus approached Cubism as a sculptor, unlike Braque and Picasso who dealt
with volume in an experimental way. He settled in the Montmartre quarter, where he
worked in isolation for a few years before meeting Léger in 1909 during a stay at La
Ruche studio complex. In 1911, he met Braque who would become a close friend.
His first Cubist works, however, did not appear until 1915, demonstrating great
maturation and great insight into the contribution of Cubism to the history of sculpture.
Due to a disability, he was not called to service during the war and was able to pursue
his artistic career.
He took a Cubist attitude to his work until 1925, and then renewed with stone and
monumental sculpture in the round.
Chronology
1907
- A major Paul Cézanne retrospective is held at the Salon d’Automne in conjunction with the
publication of the artist’s correspondence with his friend, Emile Bernard.
- Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at his Bateau-Lavoir studio in Montmartre.
- Georges Braque visits him and discovers the painting.
1908
- Echoing Les Demoiselles, Braque paints his large Baigneuse. He then sojourns at L’Estaque, where
he produces a series of canvases that would change the face of modern art: exhibited that autumn
in Paris at the Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler gallery, they cause art critic Louis Vauxcelles to coin the
term “Cubism”. The forward to the catalogue is written by a friend of Braque, Guillaume
Apollinaire.
- Juan Gris sets up in a studio at the Bateau-Lavoir complex.
1909
- Albert Gleizes encounters Jean Metzinger and proceeds to explore the use of geometric shapes in
his painting.
- Fernand Léger sets up in one of the La Ruche studios near Montparnasse, where he meets
Alexandre Archipenko, Robert Delaunay, Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendras, and later Henri
Laurens: a new Cubist group is formed.
- Kahnweiler holds an exhibition of paintings by Picasso, Braque, André Derain and Kees Van
Dongen.
1910
- The Duchamp brothers, Gaston, dit Jacques Villon, Raymond and Marcel, paint canvases in the
Cubist vein.
- With other Cubists, they exhibit their artworks at the Salon des Indépendants. Picasso and Braque
present oval-shaped paintings.
- A Braque-Picasso exhibition is held at a gallery in Munich: Cubism transcends borders.
- At the end of year, Ambroise Vollard organises a retrospective on the artwork of Picasso.
1911
- The Duchamp brothers found the Section d’or group at Puteaux: Gleizes, Delaunay, Francis
Picabia and others join them.
- Only the Cubists of Montparnasse and Puteaux exhibit their works at the Salon des Indépendants:
Metzinger, Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Gleizes, encouraged by Apollinaire. Likewise for the
Salon d’Automne. Their showroom is the subject of great debate.
- Juan Gris paints his first Cubist artworks, which appeal to Kahnweiler.
1912
- Gris exhibits his artworks for the first time.
- Picasso starts to use stencils and papiers collés. He leaves Montmartre to set up on Boulevard
Raspail, closer to Montparnasse.
- A Section d’or exhibition is held at the Galerie La Boétie, featuring the Duchamp brothers, Braque,
Picasso, Gris, Léger, Picabia, Kupka, Delaunay, Gleizes, Metzinger, Louis Marcoussis, Roger de La
Fresnaye and André Lhôte, among others.
- Gleizes and Metzinger publish Du Cubisme, the first theoretical writing on the movement.
1913
- Apollinaire publishes a collection of texts, Les peintres cubistes (aesthetic meditation).
- Picasso, Braque and Marcel Duchamp take part in the Armory Show, a major New York exhibition
that introduces their artwork to an American public.
1914
- Picasso creates a serie of sculptures that take the Cubist issues on reference to reality to their
height: a real spoon tops each version of Verre d’absinthe.
- Braque, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger, Villon are called to service for the war.
- Picasso remains in Paris, while Gris settles in Collioure and becomes closer to Matisse.
1915
- Henri Laurens begins to create Cubist sculptures.
- It is rumoured that Picasso is producing drawings in the style of Ingres. Braque suffers a head
wound and must be repatriated, but does not take up painting again until 1917.
- Marcel Duchamp, discharged, leaves for New York, where he and Picabia become major figures of
the Dada movement in the USA.
1917
- Braque renews with painting and pursues his investigation of still lifes.
- Picasso paints the drop curtain for the ballet Parade in a Neo classical style
Pasted from <http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-cubisme_en/cubisme_en.html>
Robert Delaunay
vendredi 14 mars 2008
20:31
Saint Séverin 3 1909
La ville, premier étude" 1909
La ville 2
1910
Fenêtres sur la ville 1910-1911
Tour Eiffel 1910
Le tour rouge 1911
La femme nue lisant 1915
Rythme, joie de vivre 1930
Pasted from <http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/robertdelaunay/di8.htm>
Rythme sans fin 1933 trois versions
Robert Delaunay, letter to August Macke, 1912
Direct observation of the luminous essence of nature is for me indispensable. I do not
necessarily mean observation with palette in hand, although I am not opposed to notations
taken from nature itself. I do much of my work from nature, "before the subject," as it is
commonly called. But what is of great importance to me is observation of the movement of
colors.
Only in this way have I found the laws of complementary and simultaneous contrasts of
colors which sustain the very rhythm of my vision. In this movement of colors I find the
essence, which does not arise from a system, or an a priori theory.
For me, every man distinguishes himself by his essence his personal movement, as
opposed to that which is universal. That is what I found in your works that I saw this winter at
Cologne. You are not in direct communication with nature, the only source of inspiration
directed toward beauty.' Such communication affects representation in its most vital and
critical aspect. This communication alone, by the comparison of the antagonisms, rivalries,
movements which give birth to decisive moments, permits the evolution of the soul, whereby
a man realizes himself on earth. It is impossible to be concerned with anything else in art.
I say it is indispensable to look ahead of and behind oneself in the present. If there is such a
thing as tradition, and I believe there is, it can only exist in the sense of the most profound
movements of culture.
First of all, I always see the sun! The way I want to identify myself and others is with halos
here and there halos, movements of color. And that, I believe, is rhythm. Seeing is in itself a
movement. Vision is the true creative rhythm. Discerning the quality of rhythms is a
movement, and the essential quality of painting is representation the movement of vision
which functions in objectivizing itself toward reality. That is the essential of art, and its
greatest profoundness.
I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them. One must
take care, too, not to be inhibited by them. I have a horror of manifestoes made before the
work is done.
Robert Delaunay, letter to Wassily Kandinsky, 1912
1 find what you sent in this year useful. As for our work, I think that surely the public will have
to get used to it. The effort it will have to make comes slowly, because it is drowned in
habits. On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which
is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning
of Impressionism. Seurat sought for the primary laws. Cezanne demolished the whole of
painting since its beginnings - that is to say, chiaroscuro adjusted to a linear construction,
which predominated in all the known schools.
It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know
any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world. The Cubist group of whom
you speak experiments only in line, giving color a secondary place, and not a constructional
one.
I have not yet tried to put into words my investigations in this new sphere, where all my
efforts have been directed for a long time.
I am still waiting until I can find greater flexibility in the laws I discovered. These are based
on studies in the transparency of color, whose similarity to musical notes drove me to
discover the "movement of color." All this, which I believe is unknown to everyone, is for me
still in my mind's eye. I am sending you a photograph of these endeavors, already outdated,
which have so astonished my acquaintances, and which have met with suitable judgment
totally free from "impressionism" only in rare connoisseurs. When I was doing this work and I
remember that you had asked me about it I did not know anyone able to write about these
things, but I had already made some experiments which were decisive. Even my friend
Princet was incapable of seeing them, and it has been but a short time since they have
begun to become apparent to him. I have confidence in the interpretation that could be
produced by his sensitivity, and it seems to me that he has had a strong reaction which will
lead to that result. I think, at the moment, that he will be able to reveal the meaning of these
things as a result of the work he already began several years ago, which I brought to your
attention.
Robert Delaunay, Light, 1912
Impressionism; it is the birth of Light in painting.
Light comes to us by the sensibility. Without visual sensibility there is no light, no movement.
Light in Nature creates the movement of colors.
Movement is produced by the rapport of odd elements, of the contrasts of colors between
themselves which constitutes Reality.
This reality is endowed with Vastness (we see as far as the stars), and it then becomes
Rhythmic Simultaneity.
Simultaneity in light is harmony, the rhythm of colors which creates the Vision of Man.
Human vision is endowed with the greatest Reality, since it comes to us directly from the
contemplation of the Universe. The eye is the most refined of our senses, the one which
communicates most directly with our mind, our consciousness.
The idea of the vital movement of the world and its movement is simultaneity.
Our understanding is correlative to our perception.
Let us attempt to see.
The auditory perception is not sufficient for our knowledge of the world; it does not have
vastness.
Its movement is successive, it is a sort of mechanism; its law is the time of mechanical
clocks which, like them, has no relation with our perception of visual movement in the
Universe.
It is comparable to the objects of geometry ....
Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint. If Art relates itself to an Object, it
becomes descriptive, divisionist, literary.
It demeans itself by imperfect means of expression, it condemns itself, it is its own negation,
it does not avoid an Art of imitation.
If all the same it represents the visual relations of objects or the objects between them
without light playing the organizing role of the representation, it is conventional. It never
reaches plastic purity. It is an infirmity; it is the negation of life and the sublimity of the art of
painting.
In order that Art attain the limit of sublimity, it must draw upon our harmonic vision: clarity.
Clarity will be color, proportion; these proportions are composed of diverse elements,
simultaneously involved in an action. This action must be the representative harmony, the
synchronous movement (simultaneity) of light which is the only reality.
This synchronous action then will be the Subject, which is the representative harmony.
Pasted from <http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/delaunay.html>
Leger Fernand
samedi 15 mars 2008
14:39
La noce 1911
La femme en bleu 1912
Gris Juan
samedi 15 mars 2008
14:48
Nature mort, bouteilles et couteau
Fresnaye
samedi 15 mars 2008
14:55
1913-1914 Seated Man
Jean Metzinger
samedi 15 mars 2008
14:56
La tricoteuse 1919
Cubism
vendredi 11 avril 2008
18:40
The huge shift in sensibility caused by developments in science and philosophy, these fundamentally
affected our sense of reality, our understanding of the so-called real world and how we see it. They
consisted essentially in a move from a static to a dynamic view of the world based on movement and
change, to a view that shifted from the visible to the invisible, from a perceptual to a conceptual
comprehension of the world and our place in it; Two years before les demoiselles d'Avignon einstein
published his theory of relativity, where the space according to him can no longer be conceived of as
finally fixed or measurable, but depends on the situation of movement or statis we happen to be in
at the time of looking, just a bit before there were studies of chromosomes, body seen in thhe cells
from which are bodies are composed., x-rays, it became possible to see inside the human body and
into areas not normally visible., another example of realizing the invisible lyin beneath the visible
was the publication in 1900 of Freud's Interpretation of dreams, where the idea was proposed that
the unciscious mind exists unseen below the conscious, but influences it and reveals itself through
dreams, so the person you know is not just you see on the outside, philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
beyond good and evil and thus speak Zarathustra, God is dead, he advocated man as the creator, as
the only one who leads the way, these ideas became very popular