Pablo Picasso direction. The work of Pablo Picasso in the post-war period

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Martir Patricio Ruiz and Picasso (in Russian the version with an emphasis in the French manner of Picasso is also adopted, Spanish. Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Mártir Patricio Ruiz y Picasso). Born October 25, 1881 in Malaga (Spain) - died April 8, 1973 in Mougins (France). Spanish artist, sculptor, graphic artist, theater artist, ceramicist and designer.

Founder of Cubism(together with Georges Braque and Juan Gris), in which a three-dimensional body was drawn in an original manner as a series of planes combined together. Picasso worked a lot as a graphic artist, sculptor, ceramist, etc. He brought to life a lot of imitators and had an exceptional influence on the development of fine art in the 20th century. According to the Museum's assessment contemporary art(New York), Picasso created about 20 thousand works during his life.

By expert assessments, Picasso is the most “expensive” artist in the world: in 2008, official sales of his works alone amounted to $262 million.

On May 4, 2010, Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, sold at Christie's for $106,482,000, became the most expensive work art in the world at that time.

On May 11, 2015, at the Christie's auction, a new absolute record was set for works of art sold at public auction - Pablo Picasso's painting "Algerian Women (Version O)" went for a record $179,365,000.

According to a survey of 1.4 million readers conducted by The Times newspaper in 2009, Picasso - best artist among those who lived over the past 100 years. Also, his paintings rank first in “popularity” among thieves.

According to Spanish tradition, Picasso received two surnames from the first surnames of his parents: his father - Ruiz and his mother - Picasso. Full name which future artist received at baptism - Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano (Crispiniano) de la Santisima Trinidad Martir Patricio Ruiz and Picasso.

Picasso's maternal surname, under which the artist became famous, is of Italian origin: Picasso's mother's great-grandfather Tommaso moved to Spain in early XIX century from the town of Sori in the province of Genoa. The house in Malaga's Merced Square, where Picasso was born, now houses the artist's house-museum and a foundation bearing his name.

Picasso began to draw from childhood, He received his first artistic lessons from his father, art teacher Jose Ruiz Blasco., and soon became very successful in this. At the age of 8, he painted his first serious oil painting, “Picador,” which he did not part with throughout his life.

In 1891, Don José received a position as an art teacher in A Coruña, and young Pablo and his family moved to northern Spain, where he studied at the local art school (1894-1895).

Subsequently, the family moved to Barcelona, and in 1895 Picasso entered school fine arts La Lonja. Pablo was only fourteen, so he was too young to enter La Lonja. However, at the insistence of his father, he was allowed to take the test. entrance exams on a competitive basis. Picasso passed all the exams with flying colors and entered La Lonja. At first he signed with his father's name, Ruiz Blasco, but then chose his mother's surname, Picasso.

At the beginning of October 1897, Picasso left for Madrid, where he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. Picasso used his stay in Madrid mainly for a detailed study of the collection of the Prado Museum, and not for studying at the academy with its classical traditions, where Picasso was cramped and bored.

Picasso returned to Barcelona in June 1898, where he entered into art society Els Quatre Gats, after the name of the bohemian cafe with round tables. In this cafe in 1900, its first two events took place. personal exhibitions. In Barcelona, he became close to his future friends Carlos Casajemas and Jaime Sabartes, who later became the characters in his paintings.

As a child, his mother put her son to bed and always read him fairy tales, which she herself invented, using emotions from the past day. Then Pablo himself said that it was these fairy tales that inspired in him the desire to create, using the same emotions of one day.

In 1900, Picasso and his friend, the artist Casajemas, went to Paris, where they visited the World Exhibition. It was there that Pablo Picasso became acquainted with the work of the Impressionists. His life at this time was fraught with many difficulties, and the suicide of Carlos Casajemas deeply affected the young Picasso.

Under these circumstances, at the beginning of 1902, Picasso began to paint in a style that later led to the artist’s period of creativity in Barcelona in 1903-1904 being called “blue.” The works of this time clearly express the themes of old age and death, and are characterized by images of poverty, melancholy and sadness (“Woman with a Bun of Hair,” 1903; Picasso believed: “he who is sad is sincere”); people’s movements are slowed down, they seem to be listening to themselves (“Absinthe Drinker,” 1901; “Woman with a Hairpiece,” 1901; “Date,” 1902; “Beggar Old Man with a Boy,” 1903; “Tragedy,” 1903). The master's palette is dominated by blue shades. Depicting human suffering, Picasso during this period painted blind people, beggars, alcoholics and prostitutes. Their pale, somewhat elongated bodies in the paintings are reminiscent of the works of the Spanish artist El Greco.

Work transition period- from “blue” to “pink” - "Girl on a Ball"(1905, Museum fine arts, Moscow).

In 1904, Picasso settled in Paris, where he finds refuge in the famous Montmartre hostel for poor artists Bateau Lavoir: the so-called “pink period” begins, in which there is sadness and poverty " blue period” was replaced by images from the more lively world of theater and circus. The artist preferred pink-gold and pink-gray tones, and the characters were mainly traveling performers - clowns, dancers and acrobats; the paintings of this period are imbued with the spirit of the tragic loneliness of the disadvantaged, romantic life traveling comedians (“Family of an acrobat with a monkey”, 1905).

From experiments with color and conveying mood, Picasso turned to the analysis of form: conscious deformation and destruction of nature (“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, 1907), a one-sided interpretation of Cezanne’s system and passion African sculpture lead him to a completely new genre. Together with Georges Braque, whom he met in 1907, Picasso becomes the founder of Cubism - artistic direction, who rejected the traditions of naturalism and the visual-cognitive function of art.

Picasso pays special attention transformation of forms into geometric blocks (“Factory in Horta de Ebro”, 1909), increases and breaks volumes (“Portrait of Fernanda Olivier”, 1909), dissects them into planes and edges, continuing in space, which he himself considers solid body, inevitably limited by the plane of the picture (“Portrait of Kahnweiler”, 1910).

Perspective disappears, the palette tends toward monochrome, and although the original goal of Cubism was to reproduce the sense of space and heaviness of masses more convincingly than with the help of traditional techniques, Picasso’s paintings are often reduced to incomprehensible puzzles.

To restore contact with reality, Picasso and Georges Braque introduced typographic fonts, elements of “tricks” and rough materials into their paintings: wallpaper, pieces of newspaper, matchboxes. Still lifes begin to predominate, mainly with musical instruments, pipes and tobacco boxes, sheet music, bottles of wine, etc. - attributes inherent in the lifestyle of artistic bohemia at the beginning of the century. “Cubist secret writing” appears in the compositions: encrypted phone numbers, house numbers, scraps of lovers’ names, street names, zucchini shops.

The collage technique connects the edges of a cubist prism into large planes (“Guitar and Violin”, 1913) or conveys in a calm and humorous manner the discoveries made in 1910-1913 (“Portrait of a Girl”, 1914).

In the “synthetic” period, there also appears a desire for harmonization of color, balanced by compositions that at times fit into an oval. The actual cubist period in Picasso’s work ends shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, which separated him from Georges Braque.

Although in his significant works the artist uses some cubist techniques until 1921 (“Three Musicians”, 1921).

In September 1916, writer-screenwriter Jean Cocteau and composer Erik Satie persuade Picasso to participate in the production of the innovative “surreal” ballet “Parade” for Sergei Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet. Picasso is seriously captivated by the idea of this ballet, gets involved in the work, and, in collaboration with Satie, completely reworks both the script and set design.

A month later, he leaves with the entire troupe of the Russian Ballets for two months in Rome, where he creates scenery, costumes, meets the choreographer of Parade Leonid Myasin and many ballet dancers Russian troupe.

The introductory manifesto for the play “Parade,” “more truthful than truth itself,” was written by Guillaume Apollinaire in the spring of 1917, declaring it in advance to be the harbinger of the “New Spirit” in art.

Diaghilev consciously relied on a great provocation and prepared it with all available means. It happened exactly as he planned.

A huge scandal On May 18, 1917, which took place at the premiere (and only performance) of this ballet at the Chatelet Theater, it greatly contributed to the rise of Picasso’s popularity in wide circles of the Parisian elite. The audience in the hall almost disrupted the performance by shouting “Russian Boches, down with the Russians, Satie and Picasso Boches!” Things even came to a scuffle.

The press went wild, critics declared the Russian Ballet almost traitors, demoralizing French society in the rear during a difficult and unsuccessful war. Here is just one of the reviews, revealing in its tone, that came out the day after the premiere of “Parade”. By the way, the author of this article was not some marginal critic at all, but the completely respectable Leo Poldes, owner of the Club du Faubourg.

Diaghilev was extremely pleased with the effect produced. Picasso's collaboration with the Russian Ballets continued actively after Parade (sets and costumes for Manuel de Falla's Cocked Hat, 1919). A new form of activity, bright stage images and large objects revive his interest in decorativeness and theatrical plots.

During the Roman preparations for the Parade, Picasso met the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, who became his first wife. On February 12, 1918, they got married in a Russian church in Paris; Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire were witnesses at their wedding. Their son Paulo is born (February 4, 1921).

The euphoric and conservative atmosphere of post-war Paris, Picasso’s marriage to Olga Khokhlova, the artist’s success in society - all this partly explains the return to figurativeness, temporary and, moreover, relative, since Picasso continued to paint pronounced cubist still lifes at that time (“Mandolin and Guitar”, 1924 ).

In 1925, one of the most difficult and uneven periods in Picasso’s work began. After the epicurean grace of the 1920s ("Dance"), Picasso creates an atmosphere of convulsions and hysteria, a surreal world of hallucinations, which can be explained in part by the influence of the surrealist poets, manifested in some drawings, poems written in 1935, and theater play created during the war.

For several years, Picasso’s imagination seemed to be able to create only monsters, some creatures torn to pieces (“Seated Bather”, 1929), screaming (“Woman in a Chair”, 1929), bloated to the point of absurdity and shapeless (“Bather”, drawing , 1927) or embodying metamorphic and aggressively erotic images (“Figures on the Seashore”, 1931).

Despite several calmer works, which are the most significant in terms of painting, stylistically it was a very changeable period (“Girl in front of a mirror”, 1932). Women remain the main victims of his cruel unconscious whims, perhaps because Picasso himself did not get along well with his his own wife or because simple beauty Marie-Therese Walter, whom he met in March 1932, inspired him to open sensuality (“Mirror”, 1932). She also became the model for several serene and majestic sculptural busts executed in 1932 at the Château de Boisgeloup, which he acquired in 1930.

In 1930-1934, it was in sculpture that Picasso’s entire vitality was expressed: busts and female nudes, in which the influence of Matisse is sometimes noticeable (“Reclining Woman,” 1932), animals, small figures in the spirit of surrealism (“Man with a Bouquet,” 1934) and especially metal structures, which have semi-abstract, semi-real forms and are sometimes made from rough materials (he creates them with the help of his friend, the Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez - “Construction”, 1931).

Along with these strange and edgy forms, Picasso's engravings of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1930) testify to the continuity of his classical inspiration.

In 1937, Picasso's sympathies were with the Republicans fighting in Spain(a series of aquatints “Dreams and Lies of General Franco”, printed in the form of postcards, was scattered from airplanes over the positions of the Francoists).

In April 1937, German and Italian aircraft bombed and destroyed the small Basque town of Guernica - the cultural and political center of life of this freedom-loving people. In two months, Picasso creates his "Guernica"- a huge canvas that was exhibited in the Republican Pavilion of Spain on World's Fair in Paris.

Light and dark monochrome colors seem to convey the feeling of flashes of fire. In the center of the composition, like a frieze, in a combinatorics of cubist-surrealist elements, a fallen warrior, a woman running up to him and a wounded horse are shown. The main theme is accompanied by images of a crying woman with a dead child and a bull behind her and female figure in flames with arms raised up. Into the darkness of the small square, above which the lantern hangs, a long arm with a lamp is extended as a symbol of hope.

The horror that gripped Picasso at the threat of barbarism hanging over Europe, his fear of war and fascism, the artist did not express directly, but gave his paintings an alarming tone and gloom (“ Fishing at night in Antibes”, 1939), sarcasm, bitterness, which did not affect only children’s portraits (“Maya and her doll”, 1938). Once again, women were the main victims of this general gloom. Among them - Dora Maar, with whom the artist became close in 1936 and beautiful face which he deformed and distorted with grimaces (“ Crying woman", 1937).

Never before has an artist's misogyny been expressed with such bitterness; crowned with ridiculous hats, faces depicted from the front and in profile, wild, crushed, dissected bodies, swollen to monstrous sizes, and their parts are connected into burlesque forms (“Morning Serenade”, 1942).

The German occupation could not frighten Picasso: he remained in Paris from 1940 to 1944. It also did not weaken his activity: portraits, sculptures (“Man with a Lamb”), meager still lifes, which sometimes with deep tragedy express all the hopelessness of the era (“Still Life with a Bull Skull”, 1942).

In 1944, Picasso joined the French Communist Party. Picasso's humanistic views are evident in his works. In 1950 he draws the famous "Dove of Peace".

Picasso's post-war work can be called happy. He gets close to Françoise Gilot, whom he met in 1945 and who would give him two children, thus providing the subjects of his many charming family paintings. He leaves Paris for the south of France, discovers the joy of the sun, the beach, and the sea.

The works created in the years 1945-1955 are very Mediterranean in spirit, characterized by their atmosphere of pagan idyll and the return of antique moods, which find their expression in the paintings and drawings created at the end of 1946 in the halls of the Antibes Museum, which later became the Picasso Museum (“Joy” life").

In the autumn of 1947, Picasso began working at the Madura factory in Vallauris. Passionate about the problems of craft and manual labor, he himself makes many dishes, decorative plates, anthropomorphic jugs and animal figurines (Centaur, 1958), sometimes somewhat archaic in style, but always full of charm and wit.

Sculptures (“Pregnant Woman”, 1950) were especially important during this period. Some of them (“Goat”, 1950; “Monkey with a Baby”, 1952) are made from random materials (the goat’s belly is made from an old basket) and are masterpieces of assemblage technique. In 1953, Françoise Gilot and Picasso separated. This was the beginning of a severe moral crisis for the artist, which is echoed in a remarkable series of drawings executed between the end of 1953 and the end of winter 1954, in which Picasso, in his own way, in a puzzling and ironic manner, expressed the bitterness of old age and his skepticism towards life itself. painting.

In Vallauris, the artist began a series in 1954 portrait images"Sylvette." In the same year, Picasso met with Jacqueline Rock, who in 1958 would become his wife and inspire a series of statuary portraits.

In 1956, a documentary about the artist, “The Sacrament of Picasso,” was released on French screens.

The works of the last fifteen years of the artist’s work are very diverse and unequal in quality (“Workshop in Cannes”, 1956). It is possible, however, to highlight the Spanish source of inspiration (“Portrait of the Artist, in Imitation of El Greco,” 1950) and elements of tauromachy (Picasso was a passionate fan of bullfighting, popular in the south of France), expressed in drawings and watercolors in the spirit of Goya (1959-1968).

Picasso died on April 8, 1973 in Mougins (France) at his villa Notre-Dame de Vie. He was buried near the Vovenart castle that belonged to him. Picasso had a tremendous influence on artists from many countries, becoming the largest artist of the 20th century.

Personal life of Pablo Picasso:

Pablo Picasso was married twice.

The first time was on Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955) - in 1917-1935. They had a son, Paulo (1921-1975).

The second time - for Jacqueline Rock (1927-1986) - in 1961-1973, there were no children. Picasso's widow committed suicide.

In addition, he had illegitimate children: from Marie-Therese Walter - daughter Maya (born 1935), from Françoise Gilot (born 1921) - son Claude (born 1947) and daughter Paloma (born 1949), a French designer.

Interesting facts about Pablo Picasso:

In 2006, casino owner Steve Wynn, who bought Picasso's "The Dream" for $48.4 million in the 1990s, agreed to sell this cubist masterpiece to American collector Steven Cohen for $139 million. The deal fell through as Wynn, suffering from an eye condition and poor vision, turned awkwardly and pierced the canvas with his elbow. He himself called the incident “the most clumsy and stupid gesture in the world.” After restoration, the painting was put up for auction at Christie’s, where on March 27, 2013, Cohen purchased it for $155 million. According to Bloomberg, at that time it was maximum amount, paid for a work of art by an American collector.

In the spring of 2015, Picasso's painting "Algerian Women" (French Les Femmes d "Algers) was sold in New York for $179 million, becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

British actor Brian Blessed told The Telegraph how he met world-famous artist Pablo Picasso at the age of 12. The meeting took place during the World Peace Congress in Sheffield, British in 1950. Young Blessed approached the artist and asked him to draw something for him if he was “really Picasso.” The Spaniard made a sketch on a piece of paper in the form of a dove of peace, but the young Englishman did not appreciate the drawing and said: “This shows that you are not Picasso, this is not a dove.” According to Blessed, Picasso told him that this was the first time he had heard such criticism. The future actor threw the piece of paper with the drawing on the floor, “throwing away about 50 million pounds” (approximately $75 million). The leaf was later picked up and is currently kept in a gallery in Sheffield as a symbol of the World Peace Congress. Blessed himself, who became famous thanks to the 1980 film Flash Gordon, called this case “a harsh financial lesson.”

French artist of Spanish origin Pablo Picasso, full name Pablo Ruiz-y-Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain.

His father José Ruiz Blasco was an artist, a painting teacher at the Provincial School of Fine Arts in Malaga, and a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona.

In 1950, Picasso was elected to the World Peace Council.

In the 1950s, the artist painted many variations on the theme famous masters past, resorting to a cubist style of writing: "Algerian women. After Delacroix" (1955), "Lunch on the grass. After Manet" (1960), "Girls on the banks of the Seine. After Courbet" (1950), "Las Meninas. After Velazquez" (1957).

In 1958, Picasso created the composition "The Fall of Icarus" for the UNESCO building in Paris.

In the 1960s, Picasso created a monumental sculptural composition 15 meters high for a community center in Chicago.

- one of the most “expensive” artists in the world - the estimate (pre-sale estimate) of his works exceeds hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pablo Picasso was married twice. In 1918, he married the ballerina of the Diaghilev troupe, Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955). In this marriage, the artist had a son, Paul (1921-1975). After Olga's death in 1961, the artist married Jacqueline Rock (1927-1986). Picasso also had illegitimate children - daughter Maya from Marie-Thérèse Walter, son Claude and daughter Paloma from artist Françoise Gilot.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Picasso Pablo (1881-1973), French artist.

He studied painting first with his father X. Ruiz, then at schools of fine arts: in La Coruña (1894-1895), Barcelona (1895) and Madrid (1897-1898).

Since 1904, Picasso lived almost constantly in Paris.

His first significant works date back to the 10s. XX century The paintings of the “blue period” (1901-1904) were painted in a gloomy range of blues, indigo and green tones.

The works of the “pink period” (1905-1906) are dominated by pink-golden and pink-gray shades. Both cycles are devoted to the theme of the tragic loneliness of the blind, beggars, tramps, and the romantic life of traveling comedians (“The Old Beggar with a Boy,” 1903; “The Girl on the Ball,” 1905).

In 1907, Picasso created the canvas “Les Demoiselles de Avignon,” which marked a decisive break with the realistic tradition and a transition to the camp of artists professing avant-gardeism.

His passion for African sculpture led him to the founding of a new direction - cubism. Picasso decomposes an object into its component geometric elements, operating with combinations of breaking planes and bulky volumes, turning reality into a game of abstract details (“Lady with a Fan,” 1909; portrait of A. Vollard, 1910).

From the mid-10s. XX centuries he begins to experiment with textures, using scraps of newspapers, a piece of violin, etc. in his works. The collage “Bottle of Aperitif” (1913) and the composition “Three Musicians” (1921) complete the period of cubism, and neoclassical styles emerge in Picasso’s work trends. This was reflected in such works as “Three Women at the Source” (1921), “Mother and Child” (1922), illustrations for Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (1931), and the “Sculptor’s Workshop” series (1933). -1934). Picasso's neoclassicism is dominated by the mood of a fairy-tale idyll and graphic elegance of lines.

In the 10-20s. XX century Picasso also creates many drawings that depict images of people from the people (“Fisherman”, 1918; “Resting Peasants”, 1919).

From the second half of the 30s. his work is increasingly permeated by echoes modern events(“The Weeping Woman,” 1937; “The Cat and the Bird,” 1939). In 1936-1939 Picasso becomes a prominent figure in the Popular Front in France and actively participates in the struggle of the Spanish people against the Franco regime. At this time, the series “Dreams and Lies of General Franco” (1937) was born. An angry protest against fascist terror is the monumental panel “Guernica” (1937).

During the Second World War, Picasso remained in France occupied by Nazi troops and took part in the Resistance movement. In 1944, the artist joined the ranks of the French communist party. Anti-war subjects predominate in the works of the post-war period (“Dove of Peace”, 1947; panels “Peace” and “War”, 1952).

From the second half of the 40s. Picasso's work becomes more diverse. In addition to easel paintings, in which the artist returns to ancient motifs or parodies paintings by old masters (for example, “Las Meninas” by D. Velazquez), he also works as a sculptor (“Man with a Lamb”, bronze, 1944), a ceramist (about 2000 products), schedule.

In 1950, Picasso was elected to the World Peace Council.

Pablo Picasso(full name - Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Martir Patricio Ruiz and Picasso) – spanish artist, sculptor, graphic artist, theater artist, ceramist and designer.

He said that he depicts the world not as he sees it, but as he imagines it. It's much more valuable, that's what it is highest creativity. His works are recognized as the most sought after and turned out to be the most expensive in the world.

Brief biography

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. Pablo was the son of an art teacher Jose Ruiz, paints and brushes have accompanied him since childhood.

Pablo began to make clear pencil sketches very early. Life in the south of Spain, in the colorful ancient Malaga, where bullfights brought together almost all the inhabitants of the city, bright colors nature left their mark on his work.

The beginning of creativity

My first oil painting on wood "Picador" Picasso painted it at the age of 8, dedicating it to a bullfight. He never parted with her - she was his talisman. And in general, if he liked some thing, he became its slave, for example, he wore out his favorite shirts to holes. He was a dark-eyed, stocky, impulsive boy in a southern way, overly ambitious and very superstitious.

One day, a father asked his 12-year-old son to complete a picture with pigeons. Picasso was so carried away that he created own picture. When her father saw her, he froze in surprise. It took him a long time to come to his senses, but then I gave my son a palette and paints and never took them up again, leaving painting behind.

Study and first successes

When the family moved to Barcelona in 1894, Pablo entered the School of Fine Arts. He began to sign his works with his mother's last name - Picasso. In 1897 in Madrid he competed for entry into the San Fernando Academy. That’s when the young man felt like a real artist.

Much of painting came easy to him; he painted quickly. Communicating with his colleagues, young artists, and comparing his paintings with others, he saw that his work was brighter, more colorful, and more interesting. So gradually the realization of his exclusivity came to him.

But he understood that the artist’s path to the pinnacle of fame is difficult and long. Here his ambition and desire to conquer Olympus at any cost came in handy. He subordinated his life to one idea, showed dedication and self-discipline, taking on any work that allowed him to create freely.

Trip to France

In 1900, Picasso and a friend went to Paris- they were going there talented artists, new trends in art were born, the impressionists created there. There he worked hard and studied French. A year later, he already exhibited his works in the gallery of the famous collector Vollard.

At this time, he was greatly impressed by the suicide of a friend. Unwittingly, a “blue” period emerged in his work, when he wrote gloomy pictures, whose heroes were beggars, blind people, alcoholics, prostitutes “Absinthe Lover”, “Beggar with a Boy”.

The elongated figures in his paintings were reminiscent of the style of the Spaniard El Greco. But over time, the “blue” period gave way to the “pink” - this is how his famous "Girl on a Ball".

The Birth of Cubism

Since 1904, Picasso settled in Montmartre, where he worked on the painting "Family of an acrobat with a monkey". In 1907 he met the artist Georges Braque. Soon they moved away from naturalism together, inventing new uniform painting - cubism.

Angular volumes, geometric shapes, fragments of still lifes and faces, in which it is difficult to discern something human, fill his canvases (“Portrait of Fernand Olivier”, “Factory of Hort de Ebro”).

After the First World War, Cubism gradually began to disappear from Picasso's works. He collaborated with the Russian ballet, making sets and costumes for productions.

At this time he met a Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, who became his wife in 1918, and in 1921 their son Paul was born. Picasso was still painting his cubist still lifes, but had already become involved with graphics, creating cycles of paintings for Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.

Creativity during the war

During the Spanish Civil War, Picasso, an opponent of Franco, supporting the Republicans, painted a series of aquatints in 1937 "The Dreams and Lies of General Franco". After the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German and Italian aircraft, after the loss of life and destruction, Picasso created artistic monument this tragedy.

On a huge canvas, in his typical expressive manner, he embodied everything - grief, suffering of people, animals, destroyed buildings.

With this picture he reflected his fear of an unknown force, warning everyone that civil war in Spain may spread to Europe.

During the years of the German occupation, he remained in Paris and did not stop his work, painting portraits and still lifes, which reflected the tragedy and hopelessness of life under the fascist regime. He hated the war, hated Hitler, and in 1944 became a member of the French Communist Party.

But this was a purely external adherence to the ideals of Marx: he did not paint ideological paintings, and did not obey the laws and charters of the party. Written by him "Dove of peace" with a twig in its beak became a symbol of liberation from fascism.

Picasso - ceramics

In 1947, Picasso became interested in craft and with his own hands at the factory he made decorative plates, dishes, jugs, figurines, but soon he got tired of this hobby, and he moved on to portraits.

IN recent years Picasso wrote in different styles, imitated the impressionists. Before his death, he admitted that most of all he liked Modigliani's paintings.

Critics of painting noted: “ Not everything in his work is of equal value, but all his works are very highly valued.".

Pablo Picasso died April 8, 1973 at the age of 91 in Mougins, France. He was buried next to his castle Vauvenart.

The most famous and influential artist of the 20th century, pioneer of the Cubist genre and Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881.

Picasso's parents

Perhaps the most famous artist, whose absurdly long name became a household name, born in October 1881 in Malaga, Spain. The family had three children - the boy Pablo and his sisters Lola and Concepcion. Pablo's father, José Ruiz Blasco, worked as a professor at the School of Fine Arts. Very little is known about Picasso’s mother: Donna Maria was a simple woman. However, Picasso himself often mentioned her in his interviews. For example, he recalled that his mother, having discovered his extraordinary talent for knitting, uttered words that he remembered for the rest of his life: “Son, if you join the soldiers, you will become a general. If you go to the monastery, you will return from there as Pope.” Nevertheless, as the artist ironically noted, “I decided to become an artist and became Pablo Picasso.”

Reproduction of the painting "Girl on a Ball" by Pablo Picasso

Picasso's childhood

Despite the fact that Picasso’s school performance left much to be desired, he demonstrated unique skills in drawing, and at the age of 13 he could already compete with his father. Jose often locked him in a room with white walls and bars as punishment for poor studies. With his characteristic irony, Picasso later said that sitting in a cage gave him great pleasure: “I always brought a notebook and a pencil into the cell. I sat on the bench and drew. I could sit there forever, sit and draw.”

The beginning of a creative journey

Future legend artistic arts first declared her claim to genius when the Picasso family moved to Barcelona. At the age of 16 he entered the Royal Academy of Saint Fernand. The examiners were shocked when Pablo passed in 24 hours entrance examinations for a whole month. But soon the teenager became disillusioned with local system education, which, in his opinion, “was too fixated on the classics.” Picasso began skipping classes and wandering the streets of Barcelona, sketching buildings along the way. IN free time he met the bohemians of Barcelona. At that time, all famous artists gathered at the Four Cats cafe, where Picasso became a regular. His inimitable charisma earned him a wide circle of connections, and already in 1901 he organized the first exhibition of his paintings.

Reproduction of P. Picasso's painting "Bottle of Pernod (table in a cafe)"

Cubism, Picasso's blue and pink periods

The period between 1901 and 1904 is known as Picasso's Blue Period. The works of Pablo Picasso of those times were dominated by gloomy blue tones, and melancholic themes that accurately reflected him state of mind— the artist was in severe depression, which underlined his creative impulses. This period was marked by two outstanding paintings Old Guitarist(1903) and Life (1903).

Reproduction of Pablo Picasso's painting "Beggar with a Boy"

In the second half of 1904, a radical change in the paradigm of his work took place. The paintings of the rose period are filled with pink and red colors, and the colors in general are much softer, subtler and more delicate. The archetype of the rose period is the painting La famille de saltimbanques (1905).

Picasso worked in the Cubist genre since 1907. This direction is distinguished by the use of geometric shapes that split real objects into primitive shapes. "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is the first significant work of Picasso's cubic period. On this canvas, the faces of the people depicted are visible both in profile and in front. Subsequently, Picasso adhered to precisely this approach, continuing to split the world around us into individual atoms.

Painting "Three Women" by P. Picasso

Picasso and women

Picasso was not only an outstanding artist, but also a fairly famous Don Juan. He was married twice, but had countless connections with women different levels and morality. Picasso himself summed up his attitude towards the female sex as follows: “Women are machines for suffering. I divide women into two types: lovers and rags for wiping feet.” It is unknown whether Picasso's open contempt for the fair sex is due to the fact that two of the artist's seven most important women committed suicide, and the third died in his fourth year life together.

The indisputable fact remains that Picasso was not attached to any of the dozens or perhaps hundreds of mistresses and wives, but actively used them, including financially. Among his legal wives was the ambitious Soviet dancer Olga Khokhlova. Marriage with influential woman did not stop him from starting relationships on the side. So, Picasso met his young lover Dora Maar in a bar when she chopped her fingers into a bloody mess, trying to get into the spaces between her fingers with a knife. This deeply impressed Picasso, and he lived with Dora for several more years in secret from Khokhlova.

Reproduction of Pablo Picasso's painting "Date"

Picasso's mental disorders

Throughout his life and even after his death, Picasso was credited with a whole bunch of mental illness. However, you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to do this. Picasso's excessively inflated self-esteem, feelings of absolute superiority and uniqueness, and extreme egocentrism meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder as described in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), Fourth Edition. Picasso's schizophrenic status has been seriously questioned by medical community, since it is not possible to diagnose such a complex disease from paintings, but it is reliably known that Picasso suffered from a severe form of dyslexia - impaired ability to read and write while maintaining normal intelligence.. Picasso's painting "Algerian Women" is the most expensive painting, ever to go to auction. In 2015, it was purchased for $179 million.

Picasso hated driving for fear of hurting his hands. His luxurious Hispano-Suiza limousine was always driven by a personal driver.

Picasso had an affair with Coco Chanel. As Mademoiselle Chanel recalled, “Picasso was the only man in the second millennium who excited me.” However, Picasso himself was wary of her, and often complained that Coco was too famous and rebellious.

Picasso’s narcissism and astronomical self-esteem are legendary. However, some rumors are not such at all. Legendary artist once told a friend: “God is also an artist... just like me. I am God.”