Pablo Picasso, nacido Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, en Málaga, el 25 de Octubre del 1881. Pintor español. La trascendencia de Picasso no se agota en la fundación del cubismo, revolucionaria tendencia que rompió definitivamente con la representación tradicional al liquidar la perspectiva y el punto de vista único. A lo largo de su dilatada trayectoria, Pablo Picasso exploró incesantemente nuevos caminos e influyó en todas la facetas del arte del siglo XX, encarnando como ningún otro la inquietud y receptividad del artista contemporáneo. Su total entrega a la labor creadora y su personalidad vitalista, por otra parte, nunca lo alejarían de los problemas de su tiempo; una de sus obras maestras, el Guernica (1937), es la mejor ilustración de su condición de artista comprometido.
Hijo del también artista José Ruiz Blasco, en 1895 se trasladó con su familia a Barcelona, donde el joven pintor se rodeó de un grupo de artistas y literatos, entre los que cabe citar a los pintores Ramón Casas y Santiago Rusiñol, con quienes acostumbraba reunirse en el bar Els Quatre Gats. Entre 1901 y 1904, Pablo Picasso alternó su residencia entre Madrid, Barcelona y París, mientras su pintura entraba en la etapa denominada período azul, fuertemente influida por el simbolismo. En la primavera de 1904, Picasso decidió trasladarse definitivamente a París y establecerse en un estudio en las riberas del Sena.
En la capital francesa trabó amistad, entre otros, con los poetas Guillaume Apollinaire y Max Jacob y con el dramaturgo André Salmon; entre tanto, su pintura experimentó una nueva evolución, caracterizada por una paleta cromática tendente a los colores tierra y rosa (período rosa). Al poco de llegar a París entró en contacto con personalidades periféricas del mundillo artístico y bohemio, como los hermanos estadounidenses Leo y Gertrude Stein, o el que sería ya para siempre su marchante, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.
A finales de 1906, Pablo Picasso empezó a trabajar en una composición de gran formato que iba a cambiar el curso del arte del siglo XX: Les demoiselles d’Avignon. En esta obra cumbre confluyeron numerosas influencias, entre las que cabe citar como principales el arte africano e ibérico y elementos tomados de El Greco y Cézanne. Bajo la constante influencia de este último, y en compañía de otro joven pintor, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso se adentró en una revisión de buena parte de la herencia plástica vigente desde el Renacimiento, especialmente en el ámbito de la representación pictórica del volumen. Las tramas geométricas eliminan la profundidad espacial e introducen el tiempo como dimensión al simultanear diversos puntos de vista: era el inicio del cubismo.
Picasso y Braque desarrollaron dicho estilo en una primera fase denominada analítica (1909-1912). En 1912 introdujeron un elemento de flexibilidad en forma de recortes de papel y otros materiales directamente aplicados sobre el lienzo, técnica que denominaron collage. La admisión en el exclusivo círculo del cubismo del pintor español Juan Gris desembocó en la etapa sintética de dicho estilo, marcado por una gama cromática más rica y la multiplicidad matérica y referencial.
Entre 1915 y mediados de la década de 1920, Picasso fue abandonando los rigores del cubismo para adentrarse en una nueva etapa figurativista, en el marco de un reencuentro entre clasicismo y el creciente influjo de lo que el artista denominó sus «orígenes mediterráneos». Casado desde 1919 con la bailarina rusa Olga Koklova y padre ya de un hijo, Paulo, Pablo Picasso empezó a interesarse por la escultura a raíz de su encuentro en 1928 con el artista catalán Julio González; entre ambos introdujeron importantes innovaciones, como el empleo de hierro forjado. En 1935 nació su hija Maya, fruto de una nueva relación sentimental con Marie-Therèse Walter, con quien Pablo Picasso convivió abiertamente a pesar de seguir casado con Olga Koklova; a partir de 1936, ambas debieron compartir al pintor con una tercera mujer, la fotógrafa Dora Maar.
El estallido de la Guerra Civil española, preludio de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, lo empujó a una mayor concienciación política, fruto de la cual es una de sus obras más universalmente admiradas, el mural de gran tamaño Guernica (1937). La reducción al mínimo del cromatismo, el descoyuntamiento de las figuras y su desgarrador simbolismo conforman una impresionante denuncia del bombardeo de la aviación alemana, que el 26 de abril de 1937 arrasó esta población vasca en una acción de apoyo a las tropas del general golpista Francisco Franco. En 1943 conoció a Françoise Gilot, con la que tendría dos hijos, Claude y Paloma. Tres años más tarde, Pablo Picasso abandonó París para instalarse en Antibes, donde incorporó la cerámica a sus soportes predilectos.
En la década de 1950 realizó numerosas series sobre grandes obras clásicas de la pintura, que reinterpretó a modo de homenaje. En 1961 Pablo Picasso contrajo segundas nupcias con Jacqueline Roque; sería su última relación sentimental de importancia. Convertido ya en una leyenda en vida y en el epítome de la vanguardia, el artista y Jacqueline se retiraron al castillo de Vouvenargues, donde el creador continuó trabajando incansablemente hasta el día de su muerte.
Fuente: Biografías y Vidas
The artistic genius of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) has impacted the development of modern and contemporary art with unparalleled magnitude. His prolific output includes over 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, theater sets and costumes that convey myriad intellectual, political, social, and amorous messages. His creative styles transcend realism and abstraction, Cubism, Neoclassicism, Surrealism, and Expressionism. Born in Málaga, Spain, in 1881, Picasso studied art briefly in Madrid in 1897, then in Barcelona in 1899, where he became closely associated with a group of modernist poets, writers, and artists who gathered at the café Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats), including the Catalan Carlos Casagemas (1880–1901).
Living intermittently in Paris and Spain until 1904, his work during these years suggests feelings of desolation and darkness inspired in part by the suicide of his friend Casagemas. Picasso’s paintings from late 1901 to about the middle of 1904, referred to as his Blue Period, depict themes of poverty, loneliness, and despair. In The Blind Man’s Meal (50.188) from 1903, he uses a dismal range of blues to sensitively render a lonely figure encumbered by his condition as he holds a crust of bread in one hand and awkwardly grasps for a pitcher with the other. The elongated, corkscrew bodies of El Greco (1540/41–1614) inspire the man’s distorted features.
Picasso moved to Paris in 1904 and settled in the artist quarter Bateau-Lavoir, where he lived among bohemian poets and writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) and Max Jacob (1876–1944). In At the Lapin Agile (1992.391) from 1905, Picasso directed his attention toward more pleasant themes such as carnival performers, harlequins, and clowns. In this painting, he used his own image for the harlequin figure and abandoned the daunting blues in favor of vivid hues, red for example, to celebrate the lives of circus performers (categorically labeled his Rose Period). In Paris, he found dedicated patrons in American siblings Gertrude (1874–1946) and Leo (1872–1947) Stein, whose Saturday-evening salons in their home at 27, rue des Fleurus was an incubator for modern artistic and intellectual thought. At the Steins he met other artists living and working in the city—generally referred to as the School of Paris—such as Henri Matisse (1869–1954). Painted in 1905–6, Gertrude Stein (47.106) records Picasso’s new fascination with pre-Roman Iberian sculpture and African and Oceanic art. Concentrating on intuition rather than strict observation, and unsatisfied with the features of Stein’s face, Picasso reworked her image into a masklike manifestation stimulated by primitivism. The influence of African and Oceanic art is explicit in his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907; Museum of Modern Art, New York), a painting that signals the nascent stages of Cubism. Here the figure arrangement recalls Cézanne’s compositions of bathers, while stylistically it is influenced by primitivism, evident by the angular planes and well-defined contours that create an overall sculptural solidity in the figures.
The basic principles of Analytic Cubism (1910–12), with its fragmentation of three-dimensional forms on a two-dimensional picture plane, are embodied in Still Life with a Bottle of Rum (1999.363.63), painted in 1911. The techniques of Analytic Cubism were developed by Picasso and the French artist Georges Braque (1882–1963), who met in 1907. Picasso’s Bottle and Wine Glass on a Table (49.70.33) of 1912 is an early example of Synthetic Cubism (1912–14), a papier collé in which he pasted newsprint and colored paper onto canvas. Picasso and Braque also included tactile components such as cloth in their Synthetic Cubist works, and sometimes used trompe-l’oeil effects to create the illusion of real objects and textures, such as the grain of wood.
After World War I (1914–18), Picasso reverted to traditional styles, experimenting less with Cubism. In the early 1920s, he devised a unique variant of classicism using mythological images such as centaurs, minotaurs, nymphs, and fauns inspired by the classical world of Italy. Within this renewed expression, referred to as his Neoclassical Period, he created pictures dedicated to motherhood inspired by the birth of his son Paulo in 1921 (his first of four children by three women). Woman in White (53.140.4) of 1923 shows a woman clothed in a classic, toga-like, white dress resting calmly in a contemplative pose with tousled hair, eliciting a tender lyricism and calming spirit of maternity. Toward the end of the 1920s, Picasso drew on Surrealist imagery and techniques to make pictures of morphed and distorted figures. In Nude Standing by the Sea (1996.403.4) of 1929, Picasso’s figure recounts the classical pose of a standing nude with her arms upraised, but her body is swollen and monstrously rearranged.
By the early 1930s, Picasso had turned to harmonious colors and sinuous contours that evoke an overall biomorphic sensuality. He painted scenes of women with drooping heads and striking voluptuousness with a renewed sense of optimism and liberty, probably inspired by his affair with a young woman (one of Picasso’s numerous mistresses) named Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909–1977). Reading at a Table (1996.403.1) from 1934 uses these expressive qualities of bold colors and gentle curves to portray Marie-Thérèse seated at an oversized table, emphasizing her youth and innocence.
Although still living in France in the 1930s, Picasso was deeply distraught over the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He reacted with a powerfully emotive series of pictures, such as Dream and Lie of Franco (1986.1224.1[2]), that culminated in the enormous mural Guernica (1937; Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid), painted in a grisaille palette of gray tones. This painting, Picasso’s contribution to the Spanish Pavilion in the 1937 Exposition Universelle in Paris, is a complex work of horrifying proportion with layers of antiwar symbolism protesting the fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
From the late 1940s through the ’60s, Picasso’s creative energy never waned. Living in the south of France, he continued to paint, make ceramics, and experiment with printmaking. His international fame increased with large exhibitions in London, Venice, and Paris, as well as retrospectives in Tokyo in 1951, and Lyon, Rome, Milan, and São Paulo in 1953. A retrospective in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957 garnered a massive amount of attention, with over 100,000 visitors during the first month. This exhibition solidified Picasso’s prominence as museums and private collectors in America, Europe, and Japan vied to acquire his works.
In Faun with Stars (1970.305) from 1955, Picasso returned to the mythological themes explored in early pictures. Again, incorporating life experience into his painting, he evoked his infatuation with a new love, a young woman named Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986), who became his second wife in 1961 when the artist was seventy-nine years old. Picasso symbolized himself as a faun, calmly and coolly gazing with mature confidence and wisdom at a nymph who blows her instrument to the stars. The picture embraces his spellbound love for Jacqueline.
Even into his eighties and nineties, Picasso produced an enormous number of works and reaped the financial benefits of his success, amassing a personal fortune and a superb collection of his own art, as well as work by other artists. He died in 1973, leaving an artistic legacy that continues to resonate today throughout the world.
By James Voorhies
Source: Metropolitan Museum
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