Pablo Picasso and Cubism: the origin of the cubist movement, the periods and works of the Spanish painter author of the famous painting Guernica.
PICASSO: SUMMARY
Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 and inherited his father’s passion for art and painting , immediately demonstrating remarkable abilities. At a young age, precisely at 19, he moved to Paris, where he met the painting of Toulouse-Lautrec . Picasso ‘s stylechanged from work to work, revealing suggestions from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Bonnard, the Impressionists, the Pointillistes, giving the impression of wanting to experiment with everything.
THE PERIODS OF PABLO PICASSO
Blue Period – The death of his friend Carlo Casagemas in 1901 opens the so-called “ blue period ”. The works of these years, pervaded by a sense of sadness and melancholy and populated by figures with an absent gaze, describe a soul at the mercy of misery . The work that sums up this period is “ La vita ”. The setting is undefined and uncertain; there are two groups of figures with an absent gaze: a man and a woman and a mother with a child; these two groups are facing each other but there is no relationship between the two; in the middle there are two paintings: the lower one depicts a man crouched with his head on his knees, the upper one a couple huddled in an embrace.
Pink Period – From 1904 onwards Picasso moved into the Pink Period (1904/1906), abandoning monochrome and introducing the colours pink and red. The subjects were now circus artists : jugglers, acrobats, tightrope walkers, clowns; their physical strength was drained of energy, their gazes were absent, full of solitude and renunciation as in the “ Family of Saltimbanques ” of 1905.
Towards the Cubist period – Picasso soon abandoned the circus artists: the figures regained body and consistency and the colours tended towards the greys that characterised the Cubist age. A work from 1906 that brings us to the threshold of Cubism is “ Self-portrait ”, which Picasso would reach the following year, 1907, the year in which Picasso concluded “ Les demoiselles d’Avignon ”, considered by many to be the first Cubist painting. In this work Picasso continued the lesson of Paul Cézanne which was the matrix of Cubism , combining it with that of Primitivism , already established by Henri Matisse and the Fauves. This work initially included seven figures: five women and two men. In the transition to the definitive version, the composition, number and meaning of the figures changed; a relationship was created between the content (figures, white cloth, red curtain, still life) and the container (the background); this relationship generated a new pictorial space, closing the perspective depth. A fundamental component is that of primitivism, which the author filters from medieval Catalan art. The face at the bottom undergoes a torsion with a dislocation of the eyes, which are not on the same axis.
WHAT IS CUBISM AND CUBIST PAINTERS
Cubism is an artistic situation, a widespread climate. It was born as a working hypothesis of some artists, such as Picasso and Braque. In 1913 Apollinaire , in his Les peintres cubistes , had distinguished three types of cubism: scientific (Picasso, Braque, Gris), defined as pure; orphic (Delaunay, Léger, Picabia, Duchamp ), which reintroduces color and movement; physical (Gleizes, Metzinger).
THE PHASES OF CUBISM
The early phase of cubism (1908-1909). This phase is characterized by the simplification of volumes and space . It begins with the works: “ Nude in the Forest ” by Picasso and “ Houses at Estaque ” by Braque. They begin to break down nature into three main figures: cone, cylinder and sphere.
The analytical phase (1909-1912). The main works of this phase are “ Piano and Mandola ” by Vollard and “ Portrait of Ambroise Vollard ” by Picasso. Vollard was one of the most important dealers in Paris. In 1901 he presented an exhibition of Picasso. Cézanne portrayed him in 1899 and Picasso in 1910. In Picasso the shape of the face is broken up. The subject is observed from multiple points of view that help to reconstruct it as a mental project. The unity of the form is shattered, the outline is broken into many small parts. An indefinite space emerges, dilated in countless directions. Picasso and Braque radicalized Cézanne’s results, but realized that the path they had taken was leading them to lose their relationship with the subject.
Synthetic Cubism (1912-1916). Already in 1911 they reacted to the abstraction they had arrived at by inserting typographic characters, isolated or combined in words almost always deprived of one or more letters. These clues allow the conservation of the subject.
Picasso after cubism (1917). Here the neoclassical period begins . He creates “ Pan’s Flute ” where the classical references give the extremely simplified image something primordial.
THE SURREALIST INTERMEDIATE
In 1925 Picasso took part in the first surrealist exhibition . He did not appreciate the interior landscapes, he found them ridiculous. A work from this period is “ Bather on the Seashore ” in which the forms of the human body are confused with other forms of the animal, vegetable and mineral world, as in a hallucinated dream. Another painting from the surrealist period is “ Suite Vollard ”, where realistic, classicising and autobiographical aspects give life to a very personal interpretation of the story of the Minotaur.
GUERNICA
In “ Guernica ” Picasso recalls the bombing of the Spanish city of the same name by the Germans, representing the massacre of the innocents. He reached the definitive version after several studies; on the left side the bull, icon of brutality, triumphs over the man, represented by the head and the arm. A woman is torn apart for her dead son; a mortally wounded horse, symbol of the people, writhes. In the center a hand holds a shattered sword, held in vain against the Kraut bombers. On the right side, a terrified woman rushes out of the house with her dress in flames. The color is absent, eliminated by Picasso voluntarily together with the volume, two elements with which reality presents itself as alive; instead Picasso wanted death to be in the painting, so he removes them.
PICASSO’S LAST ACTIVITY
After the war Picasso became a ceramist, while in painting he made a series of revivals of works of art from the past. In his painting of the last years Picasso moved towards a linearity and simplification of forms , as in “ Nude lying with head up ”.
