Picasso's Techniques

From 1925 though 1936, Picasso tackled sculpture in Paris. He worked closely with the Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez. He worked on models that he planned to make on a large scale. His medium was wire of all thicknesses that were arranged in a combination of arcs, parallel lines, acute and obtuse angles. The wires created an intricate abstract image. But when looked at more closely, geometric shapes and forms could be seen that were uniquely placed in the form of a human figure. These sculptures had a three dimensional aspect. Picasso enjoyed expressing the ambiguity of formal meaning with abstraction in his picture puzzle sculptures.
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Portraits of Picasso

From the winter of 1905 on, Picasso mainly paid attention to nudes. He experimented with colour and form by only using it to reinforce forms that had been simplified to a concentrated essential. This process and principles, that later matured, can be seen in two portraits: “Self-portrait with a Palette (1906)” and the “Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906)”. In the picture of Stein, Picasso Ignores perspective and natural appearance. Her head is slightly distorted in the shape of an irregular block with eyes and nose that appear to have a life of their own. In the self-portrait, Picasso abandons all his professional techniques, and simply places his lines and area of colour inchoately in plain sight. In this painting the lines just establish form.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/459275/Pablo-Picasso

A Brief Timeline

In the spring of 1904 Picasso made the decision to move to Paris permanently, and his work reflects a change of sprit and especially a change of intellectual and artistic currents. In Paris Picasso met a new and important friend, Guillaume Apollinaire (a poet), with whom he shared the subject of the traveling circus and saltimbanques. To both the poet and the painter these rootless wandering performers (Girl Balancing on a Ball, 1905, The Actor, 1905) became a kind of evocation of the artist’s position in modern society. Picasso specifically made this identification in Family of Saltimbanques (1905), where he assumes the role of the Harlequin and Apolinaire is the strongman.
The Acrobats
1905 Family of Saltimbanques (study)

At the end of 1904 Fernande Olivier became Picasso’s mistress. She inspired many works leading up to Cubism such as, Woman with Loaves, 1906, including the sculpture Head of a Woman (1909), and several paintings related to it, Woman with Pears, 1909.
In the so-called the Rose Period from late 1904 to 1906 Picasso replaced the tones of the Blue Period to more Spanish (monochromatic) palette by those of pottery, of flesh and the earth itself. He seems to have been working with colour in an attempt to come closer to sculpture form.
http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/picasso11.html

Comparing Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was a self taught artist who changed the face of Post-Impressionism forever. His primary focus were paintings in oil mediums. The primary subjects of his paintings were those of landscapes, cityscapes, scenery, and figure. Unlike Pablo Picasso's limited colors used, Vincent van Gogh adopted a bright palette and developed a unique style. Van Gogh worked at a very rapid pace producing more that 2,000 works of art in his 10 year career as an artist however he sold only one painting throughout his entire life time and became famous until after his death. Producing about one painting per day, Van Gogh was taught to use paint straigh from the tube (impasto). He experienced with lithography. Being influenced by Neo-impressionists and Post-impresssionists, Vincent van Gogh began using lighter palettes of reds, yellows, oranges, greens, and blues. He began to experiment with the broken brushstrokes of the impressionists.Picasso on the other hand took his time painting his works of art. Rather than brilliant colors, Picasso focused on limited color palettes. After the death of his good friend Casagemas, Picasso too began to draw depressing paintings. However, the subject matter of Picasso's paintings were focused more on a variety of things. http://www.artble.com/artists/vincent_van_gogh

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/picasso/pablo_selfport1907.htm

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/artwork/vincent-van-gogh-paintings-from-paris4.htm

Picasso and The Spanish Civil War

On April 26, 1937 the Spanish Civil War changed dramatically the lives of many people when the town of Guernica was bombed. After the bombing 70 percent of the town layed in ruins. Pablo Picasso was one of the first of many to feel the emotional pain due to this massacre. Guernica was made in order to provoke an impact on people and show the tragedies Francisco Franco had created as it was said that the entire war was a propagandist war above anything else. Guernica's structure, format, style, and brush strokes were so dramatic they could create an entire novel. The most notable part of this painting was perhaphs the imense size of the painting. This creates the impression that one is part of the image itself. This clearly made it more emotional for the viewer as they related to the painting. Throughout the painting, open mouths shriek in terror and pain. There is a lot of chaos in this image as we see many dead bodies scattered all over the place. The painting is done in shades of black, white and gray which help accentuate the painting. This helps draw attention to the figures in the painting rather than the colors of it. The sentiment is depicted through the ceiling light. The light is shaped like an eye as if it were sonstantly watching over the events of the war. Light represents good, ans since Picasso was a republican the light perhaphs represented the Republicans--meaning the republicans were going to win the war. http://personal.centenary.edu/~eholland/Guernica.html

Picasso and The African Period

Following the Rose Period came Picasso's African period in which he focused in what he considered "Primitive Art" especially african masks. His paintings rendered in a muted pallette of reds and browns. During this period in time the French empire was expanding to Africa and many african artifacts were being shipped back to Paris, where Picasso got to see many unique forms of art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was Picasso's most remarkable acchievement during the African Period. However in 1907 his paintings were considered extremely daring. Even his fellow painters reacted negatively to his Picasso's works of art. Henri Matisse, in fact, believed Picasso was trying to ridicule the modern movement. http://ezinearticles.com/?Pablo-Picasso---The-African-Period&id=1170794

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Women of Avignon) began as a narrative brothel scene with five prostitutes and two men. The painting, however, began to metamorph as Picasso continued to work on it. The two women at the right were influenced by african masks Piccasso saw. His interpretation of African art was based on the idea of African savagery  as we notice his brush strokes become hacking, impetuous, and violent. http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/picasso/section5.rhtml

http://smarthistory.org/les-demoiselles-davignon.html

The Blue and Rose Period: 1901-1906

In 1901 Picasso's good friend Casagemas commited suicide after the girl he loved refused him. This was still very shocking to Picasso that he would return to thid again and again in his art. He painted The Death of Casagemas in color, The Death of Casagemas in blue, and finally "Evocation- the Burial of Casagemas."

“I began to paint in blue, when I realized that Casademas had died”, Picasso wrote.  

Through this time he moved between Paris and Barcelona mourning the death of his friend depicting isolation and misery-all of this in shades of blue. 
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/cubism/Pablo-Picasso.html


La Vie

La Vie

20th Century, Spain

Oil on Canvas

Cleveland Museum of Art

© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photographe : © The Cleveland Museum of Art 2006

After the death of his friend Casademas Picasso restricted his pallete with cold colors. His obsessions with themes of human misery reached his highest with La Vie (Life). His painting represents an allegory of a sacred and profane love, a reference to the cycle of love, and a symbolic representation of the life led by the artist. He replaced the standing man with the facial features of his deceased friend Casademas. He used monochrome blue as such in many of his paintings to show the cold mysery he felt through this period of time in his life. http://www.framemuseums.org/jsp/fiche_oeuvre.jsp?STNAV=&RUBNAV=&CODE=O1145960964528167&LANGUE=0&RH=MUSEEsUSA&OBJET_PROVENANCE=COLLECTION

Cubism

Cubism is a non-objective style of painting originally developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1906 in France. "Pre-cubist" period converted represented forms into geometrical shapes (cube, sphere, cylinder, and cone). Later between 1909 and 1911 Analitical Cubism was developed. This style of art allowed artists to transpose three-dimensional subjects into flat images on the sursface of the canvas. In 1912 Synthetic Cubism began. The attention in this style of painting was on the construction rather than the analysis of the represented object. In other words, creation instead of recreation. Artists lost their depth and became more abstract. Cubism opened the doors to new textures and materials. Cubism lasted until the 1920's. http://tars.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/cubism.html

About Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 and died April 8, 1973. Picasso was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer. He was considered one of the most influential artist of the 20th century and the creator of cubism. http://www.biography.com/articles/Pablo-Picasso-9440021?part=0