October 25 is the birthday of the “great and terrible” artist Pablo Picasso, who became famous throughout the world for his unique paintings painted in the style of cubism.
And even if you are far from art and have never seen the work of a genius, you certainly know his name. Let’s find out some interesting facts about him.
October 25 marks the 139th anniversary of the birth of Pablo Picasso, who gave the world unique masterpieces that today are worth millions. For 91 years of his life, the artist was amazed, surprised, inspired, frightened, and even shocked by his works.
The women’s portal HOCHU.ua has collected for you interesting fragments from the life of Pablo Picasso.
Genius From Birth
Ruiz Picasso – Pablo’s father, was an artist and taught at an art school in Malaga. In addition, he was the curator of the local museum. Not surprisingly, the son’s first spoken word was “piz”, which translates from Spanish as “pencil”.
When Pablo grew up, he could already boast of incredible paintings. So, in 1896, he painted a huge portrait of his sister Lola “First Communion”, and later “Portrait of his mother”.
Blue Period
The “Blue Period” of Pablo Picasso’s work was provoked by tragedy. In 1901, his best friend, the poet and art student Carlos Casajemas, shot himself. The cause of suicide was unrequited love. This situation greatly influenced the attitude and views on the life of the artist.
After a painful loss, Picasso began to create paintings in cold blue tones, which were dominated by the themes of old age, death, poverty, and sadness. Over time, this period in the artist’s work began to be called the “blue period”.
Pink Period
Predictably, Pablo Picasso’s “pink period” was inspired by love. In 1904, the artist met the model Fernande Olivier, whose image formed the basis for the creation of 60 paintings by the author.
Rose-gold tones began to appear in Picasso’s paintings. The subject matter also became more “lively” – at that time he painted circus performers, dancers, flowers, and summer light.
“Goddesses And Beddings”
Pablo Picasso was a very loving man. In addition to two official marriages: with the ballerina Olga Khokhlova in 1917-1955 and Jacqueline Roque in 1961, the artist had a considerable list of mistresses and “muses” who often appeared on his canvases. With the artist and writer Francoise Gilot, Pablo Picasso even had two children. And portraits of Marie-Therese Walter can be seen at the Tate Gallery exhibition.
But, despite the fact that numerous novels inspired the artist, his relationship with women can hardly be called fabulous. He once told the mother of two of his children, Françoise Gilot: “Women are machines for suffering. There are only two types of women – goddesses and bedding.”
Picasso closely connected sex and art. Pablo was very active in the bedroom and, having had his fill in the bed of love, dedicated pictures to his muses. Sam Rose, a real estate developer from Washington, and his wife, Julia Walters, have amassed a collection of paintings of Picasso’s beloved women. And portraits of four muses, symbolizing key milestones in the artist’s career, were presented at the Impressionist and Modernist auction at Christie’s in New York on November 11th.
Four Main Muses In The Life Of Pablo Picasso
Maria Theresa
At the first meeting at the Galeries Lafayette in 1927, the master said to the charming girl the words that have become classics: “You have a very interesting face. I would like to draw your portrait. ” And he added to the astonished 17-year-old girl: “It seems to me that we will do great things.”
Dora Maar
“For me, she was always woman weeping woman,” Picasso said about Dora, who inspired him for his most famous painting “Guernica”, “For many years I painted her as a martyr, but not out of sadism and not out of pleasure. That’s how I saw her “. When Pablo left the mentally unbalanced Dora for a new passion, 21-year-old Françoise Gilot, Maar dramatically said: “After Picasso, only God.”
Françoise Gillot
The young and rebellious Françoise Gilot manipulated the mood of Pablo Picasso easily and almost naturally. Unstable relationships played an important role in the artist’s creative search. He used the innocence of Françoise to expressively display a gloomy reality. And many years later, Francoise explained her break with a genius: “I was not a submissive wife.”
Jacqueline Rock
Jacqueline Rock is the second official wife of Pablo Picasso. A swarthy and compliant girl was ideal for the artist. It was she who was depicted by the author in his legendary painting “Bust of a Naked Woman”. The genius compared his wife’s face with a courtesan on the canvas “Algerian women in their chambers” by Eugene Delacroix and created his own series “Women of Algeria”. One version was sold at Christie’s in 2015 for $179 million. We’ll talk about this in more detail later.
African Culture
In 1906, Picasso completely changed his approach to painting after studying African art. Having become acquainted with African tribal masks, various attributes, and body modifications, Picasso developed a craving for abstraction. Subsequently, these experiments became the basis of cubism.
Cubism
In addition to African culture, they were inspired by Pablo Picasso and the work of Paul Cezanne. So, the artist began to experiment with the image of material objects. Working with fellow artist Georges Braque, he simplified the objects he depicted into geometric forms, after which he began to try to display them on canvas. Cubism was born.
But modern art historians consider the artist’s initial attempts to be “analytical cubism” since in them each object consisted of countless facets in shades of gray and brown. And only later, when Picasso came to spacious forms, bright colors, and collage elements, “synthetic cubism” appeared.
“Menin”
Pablo Picasso was “obsessed” with individual works of “old school” artists. He “rewrote” 15 versions of “The Women of Algeria in Their Chambers” by Eugène Delacroix.
And the work “Las Meninas” by Diego Velasquez became the artist’s mission No. 1. No wonder, because this is one of the greatest artists of all time, and the legendary painting is an invaluable exhibit at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
So, Picasso painted 1957 as many as 58 versions of the painting “Las Meninas”: from large-scale copies of the entire scene to portraits of individual characters.
One day, the Republican government asked Picasso to create a painting for the 1937 World’s Fair. The artist was so shocked by the tragic destruction of the Basque city of Guernica by Nazi bombers during the Spanish Civil War that he created the strongest painting dedicated to this event.
Guernica
Today, “Guernica” is considered a worldwide symbol of the horrors of war. The UN even commissioned a tapestry copy of the painting, which was hung at the organization’s headquarters in New York.
Surrealist
Suddenly, Pablo Picasso, being famous in the genre of cubism, returns to realism and begins to paint paintings with a promise to Greek and Roman art. And all why? Because at this time the artist begins to communicate a lot with the surrealists. So, the main images of his paintings are sex and random fruits of fantasy.
Pottery
After all, it is not in vain that they say that a talented person is talented in everything. In the late 40s, Picasso took up ceramics. At first, the genius did not pursue a great goal, he just wanted to find an activity during which he could relax. And during a summer vacation on the French Riviera, the artist completely immersed himself in a new hobby. And this has borne fruit in the form of 1,228 sculptures.
The author himself totaled 50,000 works of art in his life, including 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, and many drawings, engravings, carpets, and tapestries.