The blue general reads and writes Leonty Vasilyevich Dubelt was a great hunter before reading. However, the general should not be reproached for illegibility of tastes, he did not deserve such reproaches. Even at a relatively young age, he told the publisher of Otechestvennye Zapiski Kraevsky,

There is hardly a person on the planet who is not familiar with the name Pablo Picasso. The founder of cubism and an artist of many styles in the 20th century influenced the fine arts not only in Europe, but throughout the world.

Artist Pablo Picasso: childhood and years of study

One of the brightest was born in Malaga, in a house on Merced Square, in 1881, on October 25th. Now there is a museum and fund named after P. Picasso. Following the Spanish tradition at baptism, the parents gave the boy a rather long name, which is an alternation of the names of saints and the closest and most revered relatives in the family. Ultimately, he is known by his very first and last. Pablo decided to take his mother's surname, considering his father's too simple. The boy's talent and craving for drawing manifested itself from early childhood. The first and very valuable lessons were given to him by his father, who was also an artist. His name was Jose Ruiz. He painted his first serious picture at the age of eight - "Picador". We can safely say that it was with her that the work of Pablo Picasso began. The father of the future artist received a job offer as a teacher in La Coruña in 1891, and soon the family moved to the north of Spain. In the same place, Pablo studied at the local art school for a year. Then the family moved to one of the most beautiful cities - Barcelona. Young Picasso was 14 years old at the time, and he was too young to study at La Lonja (School of Fine Arts). However, the father was able to ensure that he was admitted to the entrance exams on a competitive basis, with which he coped brilliantly. After another four years, his parents decided to enroll him in the best advanced art school at that time - "San Fernando" in Madrid. Studying at the academy quickly bored the young talent; in its classical canons and rules, he was cramped and even bored. Therefore, he devoted more time to the Prado Museum and the study of its collections, and a year later he returned to Barcelona. The early period of his work includes paintings painted in 1986: “Self-portrait” by Picasso, “First Communion” (it depicts the artist’s sister Lola), “Portrait of a Mother” (pictured below).

During his stay in Madrid, he first made where he studied all the museums and the paintings of the greatest masters. Subsequently, he would come to this center of world art several times, and in 1904 he would finally move.

"Blue" period

This time period can be seen as exactly at this time, his individuality, still subject to extraneous influence, begins to appear in the work of Picasso. A well-known fact: the talent of creative natures manifests itself as brightly as possible in difficult life situations. This is exactly what happened to Pablo Picasso, whose works are now known to the whole world. The takeoff was instigated and came after a long depression caused by the death of close friend Carlos Casagemas. In 1901, at the exhibition organized by Vollard, 64 works by the artist were presented, but at that time they were still full of sensuality and brightness, the influence of the Impressionists was clearly felt. The “blue” period of his work gradually entered into its legal rights, manifesting itself with rigid contours of figures and the loss of three-dimensionality of the image, moving away from the classical laws of artistic perspective. The palette of colors on his canvases is becoming more and more monotonous, the emphasis is on blue. The beginning of the period can be considered "Portrait of Jaime Sabartes" and Picasso's self-portrait, written in 1901.

Paintings of the "blue" period

The key words during this period for the master were such words as loneliness, fear, guilt, pain. In 1902, he will return to Barcelona again, but he will not be able to stay there. The tense situation in the capital of Catalonia, poverty on all sides and social injustice result in popular unrest, which gradually engulfed not only all of Spain, but also Europe. Probably, this state of affairs had an impact on the artist, who this year is working fruitfully and extremely hard. Masterpieces of the “blue” period are created in the Motherland: “Two Sisters (Date)”, “An Old Jew with a Boy”, “Tragedy” (photo of the canvas above), “Life”, where the image of the deceased Casagemas once again appears. In 1901, the painting "The Absinthe Drinker" was also painted. It traces the influence of the popular at that time passion for "vicious" characters, characteristic of French art. The theme of absinthe sounds in many paintings. The work of Picasso, among other things, is full of drama. The hypertrophied hand of a woman, with which she seems to be trying to defend herself, catches the eye especially clearly. At present, The Absinthe Drinker is kept in the Hermitage, having got there from a private and very impressive collection of Picasso's works (51 works) by S. I. Shchukin after the revolution.

As soon as the opportunity arises to go again, he decides to use it without hesitation and leaves Spain in the spring of 1904. It is there that he will encounter new interests, sensations and impressions, which will give rise to a new stage in his work.

"Pink" period

In the work of Picasso, this stage lasted for a relatively long time - from 1904 (autumn) until the end of 1906 - and was not entirely uniform. Most of the paintings of the period are marked by a light range of colors, the appearance of ocher, pearl-gray, red-pink tones. Characteristic is the appearance and subsequent dominance of new themes for the artist's work - actors, circus performers and acrobats, athletes. Of course, the vast majority of the material was provided to him by the Medrano circus, which in those years was located at the foot of Montmartre. The bright theatrical setting, costumes, behavior, variety of characters seemed to have returned P. Picasso to the world, albeit transformed, but real forms and volumes, natural space. The images in his paintings again became sensual and filled with life, brightness, as opposed to the characters of the "blue" stage of creativity.

Pablo Picasso: works of the "pink" period

The paintings that marked the beginning of a new period were first exhibited at the end of the winter of 1905 in the Serurier Gallery - these are "Seated Nude" and "Actor". One of the recognized masterpieces of the "pink" period is "The Family of Comedians" (pictured above). The canvas has impressive dimensions - more than two meters in height and width. The figures of circus performers are depicted against the blue sky, it is generally accepted that the harlequin on the right side is Picasso himself. All the characters are static, and there is no internal closeness between them, everyone was bound by inner loneliness - the theme of the entire "pink" period. In addition, the following works by Pablo Picasso are worth noting: “Woman in a Shirt”, “Toilet”, “Boy Leading a Horse”, “Acrobats. Mother and son”, “Girl with a goat”. All of them demonstrate to the viewer the beauty and serenity rare for the artist's paintings. A new impetus to creativity happened at the end of 1906, when Picasso traveled around Spain and ended up in a small village in the Pyrenees.

African period of creativity

P. Picasso first encountered archaic African art at the thematic exhibition of the Trocadero Museum. He was impressed by pagan idols of primitive form, exotic masks and figurines, embodying the great power of nature and distanced from the smallest details. The artist's ideology coincided with this powerful message, and as a result, he began to simplify his characters, making them look like stone idols, monumental and sharp. However, the first work in the direction of this style appeared back in 1906 - this is a portrait of the work of Pablo Picasso of the writer. He rewrote the picture 80 times and already completely lost faith in the possibility of embodying her image in a classical style. This moment can rightfully be called transitional from following nature to deformation of the form. It is enough to look at such canvases as "Naked Woman", "Dance with Veils", "Dryad", "Friendship", "Bust of a Sailor", "Self-Portrait".

But perhaps the most striking example of the African stage of Picasso's work is the painting "Avignon Girls" (pictured above), on which the master worked for about a year. She crowned this stage of the artist's creative path and largely determined the fate of art as a whole. For the first time, the canvas saw the light only thirty years after it was written and became an open door to the world of the avant-garde. The bohemian circle of Paris literally split into two camps: “for” and “against”. The painting is currently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Cubism in the work of Picasso

The problem of the uniqueness and accuracy of the image remained in first place in European fine art until the moment when cubism burst into it. The impetus for its development is considered by many to be the question that arose among artists: “Why paint?” At the beginning of the 20th century, almost anyone could be taught a reliable image of what you see, and photography was literally on the heels, which threatened to completely and completely displace everything else. Visual images become not only believable, but also accessible, easily replicated. Cubism of Pablo Picasso in this case reflects the individuality of the creator, refusing a plausible image of the outside world and opening up completely new possibilities, the boundaries of perception.

Early works include: “Pot, glass and book”, “Bathing”, “Bouquet of flowers in a gray jug”, “Bread and fruit bowl on the table”, etc. The canvases clearly show how the artist’s style changes and acquires increasingly abstract features towards the end of the period (1918-1919). For example, "Harlequin", "Three Musicians", "Still Life with Guitar" (pictured above). Associating the viewers of the master's work with abstractionism did not suit Picasso at all, the very emotional message of the paintings, their hidden meaning, was important to him. In the end, the style of cubism created by him himself gradually ceased to inspire and interest the artist, opening the way for new trends in creativity.

classical period

The second decade of the 20th century was quite difficult for Picasso. So, 1911 was marked by a story with stolen figurines from the Louvre, which did not put the artist in the best light. In 1914, it turned out that, even after living in the country for so many years, Picasso was not ready to fight for France in the First World War, which divorced him from many friends. And the following year, his beloved Marcel Humbert died.

The return of a more realistic Pablo Picasso in his work, whose works were again filled with readability, figurativeness and artistic logic, was also influenced by many external factors. Including a trip to Rome, where he was imbued with ancient art, as well as communication with the Diaghilev ballet troupe and acquaintance with the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, who soon became the second wife of the artist. The beginning of a new period can be considered her portrait of 1917, which in some way was of an experimental nature. The Russian ballet of Pablo Picasso not only inspired the creation of new masterpieces, but also presented his beloved and long-awaited son. The most famous works of the period: Olga Khokhlova (pictured above), Pierrot, Still Life with Jug and Apples, Sleeping Peasants, Mother and Child, Women Running on the Beach, Three Graces .

Surrealism

The division of creativity is nothing but the desire to put it on the shelves and squeeze it into a certain (stylistic, temporal) framework. However, to the work of Pablo Picasso, who is adorned by the best museums and galleries in the world, such an approach can be called very conditional. If you follow the chronology, then the period when the artist was close to surrealism falls on 1925-1932. It is not at all surprising that the muse visited the master of the brush at every stage of his work, and when O. Khokhlova wished to recognize herself on his canvases, he turned to neoclassicism. However, creative people are fickle, and soon the young and very beautiful Maria Teresa Walter, who at the time of their acquaintance was only 17 years old, entered the life of Picasso. She was destined for the role of a mistress, and in 1930 the artist bought a castle in Normandy, which became her home, and his workshop. Maria Teresa was a faithful companion, steadfastly enduring the creative and loving throwing of the creator, maintaining friendly correspondence until the death of Pablo Picasso. Works of the Surrealist period: "Dance", "Woman in an armchair" (pictured below), "Bather", "Nude on the beach", "Dream", etc.

World War II period

Sympathy for Picasso during the hostilities in Spain in 1937 belonged to the Republicans. When Italian and German aircraft destroyed Guernica, the political and cultural center of the Basques, in the same year, Pablo Picasso depicted the city in ruins on a huge canvas of the same name in just two months. He was literally seized with horror from the threat that hung over the whole of Europe, which could not but affect his work. Emotions were not expressed directly, but embodied in the tone, its gloom, bitterness and sarcasm.

After the wars died down, and the world came into relative balance, restoring everything that had been destroyed, Picasso's work also acquired happier and brighter colors. His canvases, written in 1945-1955, have a Mediterranean flavor, are very atmospheric and partly idealistic. At the same time, he began to work with ceramics, creating many decorative jugs, dishes, plates, figurines (the photo is presented above). The works that were created in the last 15 years of his life are very uneven in style and quality.

One of the greatest artists of the twentieth century - Pablo Picasso - died at the age of 91 in his villa in France. He was buried near the Vovenart castle that belonged to him.

The "Blue Period" is perhaps the first stage in the work of Picasso, in relation to which one can speak of the individuality of the master, despite the still sounding notes of influences. The first creative takeoff was provoked by a long depression: in February 1901, in Madrid, Picasso learned about the death of his close friend Carlos Casagemas. On May 5, 1901, the artist came to Paris for the second time in his life, where everything reminded him of Casagemas, with whom he had recently discovered the French capital. Pablo settled in the room where Carlos spent his last days, started an affair with Germain, because of which a friend committed suicide, communicated with the same circle of people. One can imagine what a complex knot the bitterness of loss, a sense of guilt, a sense of the proximity of death were woven into for him ... All this largely served as the "garbage" from which the "blue period" grew. Later, Picasso said: "I plunged into blue when I realized that Casagemas was dead."

However, in June 1901, at the first Paris exhibition of Picasso, opened by Vollard, there is still no "blue" specificity: 64 works presented are bright, sensual, and the influence of the Impressionists is noticeable in them. The “blue period” came into its own gradually: rather rigid contours of figures appeared in the works, the master stopped striving for the “three-dimensionality” of images, and began to move away from the classical perspective. Gradually, his palette becomes less and less diverse, accents of blue sound more and more. The beginning of the actual "blue period" is considered to be created in the same 1901 "Portrait of Jaime Sabartes". Sabartes himself said about this work: "Looking at myself on the canvas, I realized what exactly inspired my friend - it was the whole spectrum of my loneliness, seen from the outside."

The key words for this period of Picasso's work are indeed "loneliness", "pain", "fear", "guilt", an example of this is the "Self-portrait" of the master, created a few days before leaving for Barcelona. In January 1902, he would return to Spain, but he would not be able to stay - the Spanish circle was too small for him, Paris was too tempting for him, he would again go to France and spend several desperate months there. The works were not sold, life was very hard.

He had to return to Barcelona again and stay for the last time for more than a year. The capital of Catalonia met Picasso with high tension, poverty and injustice surrounded him from all sides. The social ferment that engulfed Europe at the turn of the century also captured Spain. Probably, this also affected the thoughts and moods of the artist, who worked extremely hard and fruitfully in his homeland. Such masterpieces of the "blue period" as "Date (Two Sisters)", "Tragedy", "Old Jew with a Boy" were created here. The image of Casagemas reappears in the painting "Life": it was written on top of the work "Last Moments", exhibited at the World Exhibition of 1900 in Paris and became the reason for the first trip of Picasso and Casagemas to the capital of France. During periods of lack of money, the artist more than once painted over paintings, but in this case, perhaps this "barbarism" had some symbolic meaning - as a sign of farewell to the old art and to Carlos, who also remained forever in the past.

In the spring of 1904, the opportunity arose to leave for Paris again, and Picasso did not hesitate. It was in Paris that he was waiting for new sensations, new people, interests and a new period - "pink", which begins in the autumn of 1904.

“I plunged into blue when I realized that Casajemas was dead,” Picasso later admitted. "The period from 1901 to 1904 in the work of Picasso is usually called the "blue" period, since most of the paintings of this time are painted in a cold blue-green scale, exacerbating the mood of fatigue and tragic poverty." What was later called the "blue" period was multiplied by images of sad scenes, paintings full of deep melancholy. At first glance, all this is incompatible with the enormous vitality of the artist himself. But remembering the self-portraits of a young man with huge sad eyes, we understand that the paintings of the "blue" period convey the emotions that owned the artist at that time. A personal tragedy sharpened his perception of the life and grief of suffering and disadvantaged people.

It is paradoxical, but true: the injustice of the life order is keenly felt not only by those who have experienced the yoke of life's hardships since childhood, or even worse - the dislike of loved ones, but also by quite prosperous people. Picasso is a prime example of this. His mother adored Pablo, and this love became an impenetrable armor for him until his death. The father, who constantly experienced financial difficulties, knew how to help his son with all his might, although he sometimes moved in a completely different direction than don Jose indicated. The beloved and prosperous young man did not become an egocentric, although the atmosphere of the decadent culture in which he was formed in Barcelona, ​​it would seem, contributed to this. On the contrary, he felt with great force the social disorder, the huge gulf between the poor and the rich, the injustice of the structure of society, its inhumanity - in a word, everything that led to the revolutions and wars of the 20th century.

“Let's turn to one of the central works of Picasso of that time - to the painting “The Old Beggar with a Boy”, made in 1903 and now in the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin. Two sitting figures are depicted on a flat neutral background - a decrepit blind old man and a little boy. The images are given here in their sharply contrasting opposition: the face of an old man, wrinkled, as if sculpted by a powerful play of chiaroscuro, with deep cavities of blind eyes, his bony, unnaturally angular figure, the breaking lines of his legs and arms and, as opposed to him, wide-open eyes on a gentle , the softly modeled face of a boy, the smooth, flowing lines of his clothes. A boy standing on the threshold of life, and a decrepit old man, on whom death has already left its mark - these extremes are united in the picture by some tragic commonality. The boy's eyes are wide open, but they seem as unseeing as the terrible gaps in the old man's eye sockets: he is immersed in the same bleak meditation. The dull blue color further enhances the mood of sorrow and hopelessness, which is expressed in the sadly concentrated faces of people. The color here is not the color of real objects, nor is it the color of real light flooding the space of the picture. With the same dull, deadly cold shades of blue, Picasso conveys the faces of people, their clothes, and the background on which they are depicted.

The image is lifelike, but there are many conventions in it. The proportions of the old man's body are hypertrophied, an uncomfortable posture emphasizes his brokenness. Thinness is unnatural. The boy's facial features are oversimplified. “The artist does not tell us anything about who these people are, what country or era they belong to, and why they are sitting on this blue earth, huddled together like this. Nevertheless, the picture says a lot: in the contrasting opposition of the old man and the boy, we see both the sad, bleak past of one, and the hopeless, inevitably gloomy future of the other, and the tragic present of both of them. The very mournful face of poverty and loneliness looks at us with its sad eyes from the picture. In his works created during this period, Picasso avoids fragmentation, detailing and strives in every possible way to emphasize the main idea of ​​the depicted. This idea remains common to the vast majority of his early writings; just like in The Old Beggar Man with the Boy, it consists in revealing the disorder, the mournful loneliness of people in the tragic world of poverty.

Although he himself came from a bourgeois background, and his habits and way of thinking were bourgeois, his painting was not bourgeois.

In 1896, Picasso's father rented a workshop for his son Pablo Picasso Ruiz on Calle de la Plata, where he could now work without coercion and supervision and do whatever he liked. The following year, his parents sent him to Madrid.

The artist who largely determined the nature of Western European and American art of the twentieth century was Pablo Picasso, a Spaniard who lived most of his life in France.

In 1900, Picasso and his friend Casachemes left for Paris. They settled in a studio recently vacated by another Catalan painter, Isidre Nonell. It was there, in Paris, that Pablo Picasso became acquainted with the work of the Impressionists. His life at this time is fraught with many difficulties, and the suicide of his friend Casajemes had a profound effect on the young Picasso. Under these circumstances, at the beginning of 1902, he began to make works in the style, subsequently called the "blue period". Picasso develops this style upon his return to Barcelona, ​​in 1903-1904. The heroes of his paintings of the “blue” and “pink” periods are ordinary women, acrobats, itinerant circus actors, beggars. Even works devoted to the theme of motherhood are imbued not with happiness and joy, but with the mother's anxiety and concern for the fate of the child.

blue period.

The beginning of the "blue period" is usually associated with the artist's second trip to Paris. Indeed, he returns to Barcelona by Christmas 1901 with completed and begun canvases, painted in a completely different manner than that in which he has worked until now.

In 1900, Picasso met the graphics of Theophile Steinlen. He is interested in the color aggressiveness of northern artists, but it was at this time that he significantly limited his own color material. Everything happened quickly, sometimes even simultaneously. Picturesque works, pastels or drawings were constantly changing in style, in expression. The theme and nature of the works, which are separated by several weeks, and sometimes even days, can be radically different. Picasso had an excellent visual memory and susceptibility. He is more of a master of shade than color. Painting for the artist rests primarily on a graphic basis.

Sadness is what gives birth to art, he now convinces his friends. In his paintings, a blue world of silent loneliness arises, people rejected by society - the sick, the poor, the crippled, the elderly.

Picasso already in these years was prone to paradoxes and surprises. The years 1900-1901 are usually called "Lautren" and "Steilen" in the artist's work, thus indicating a direct connection with the art of his Parisian contemporaries. But after a trip to Paris, he finally breaks with his hobbies. The "Blue Period" in terms of attitude, problems, plasticity is already associated with the Spanish artistic tradition.

2 canvases help to understand the situation - “Absinthe Drinker” and “Date”. They stand on the very threshold of the "blue period", anticipating many of its thematic aspects and at the same time completing a whole strip of Picasso's searches, his movement towards his own truth.

It is safe to say that at the age of 15, Picasso already had an excellent command of artistic skills in the academic sense of the word. And then he is captivated by the spirit of experimentation in search of his own path in the complex intertwining of directions and currents of European art at the turn of the 20th century. In these quests, one of the remarkable features of Picasso's talent was manifested - the ability to assimilate, assimilate various trends and trends in art. In "Date" and "The Absinthe Drinker" the primary sources (the Parisian school of art) still show through. But the young Picasso is already beginning to speak in his own voice. What disturbed and tormented him now required other pictorial solutions. Past attachments have been exhausted.

With the fearlessness of a true great artist, 20-year-old Picasso turns to the "bottom" of life. He visits hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, shelters. Here he finds the heroes of his paintings - beggars, cripples, destitute, abused and thrown out by society people. The artist wanted to express not only sentimental compassion for them with his canvases. The blue world of silence, in which he immerses his characters, is not only a symbol of suffering and pain, it is also a world of proud loneliness, moral purity.

"Two Sisters" was one of the first works of this period. In "Sisters" and in general in the works of the "blue period" the author focuses on certain traditions of medieval art. He was attracted by the style of Gothic, especially Gothic plastic with its spiritualized expressiveness of forms. Picasso in those years discovers El Greco and Moralesi. In their works, he finds psychological expressiveness, consonant with his then moods and searches, the symbolism of color, sharp expression of forms, sublime spirituality of images.

"Two Sisters" is a characteristic work of the "blue period" in all respects. In the multifaceted content of the "Sisters" the theme of communication between people, the friendship of two beings as a guarantee of protection from the hardships of life, the hostility of the world again sounds.

Another typical painting by Picasso of the “blue period” is “Old Jew with a boy”. They adjoin a series of works where the beggars, the blind, the crippled act as heroes. In them, the artist seems to challenge the world of prosperous and indifferent moneybags and philistines. In his heroes, Picasso wanted to see the bearers of certain truths hidden from ordinary people, accessible only to the inner eye, the inner life of a person. No wonder most of the characters in the paintings of the "blue period" seem blind, do not have their own face. They live in their inner world, their thin "Gothic" fingers learn not the external forms of objects, but their inner secret meaning.

In Madrid, from February 1901, Picasso for the first time began to seriously study the new art, which then began its victorious march almost throughout Europe. The few months spent in Madrid turned out to be decisive for the future development of his life. This moment is marked even by a purely outward change: he used to sign his drawings with P. Ruiz Picasso, but now only the name of his mother can be seen on his works.

During this period, Picasso works fruitfully. His exhibitions are organized in Barcelona. June 24, 1901 organized the first exhibition in Paris, where he now lived. A new style is gaining momentum here, breaking the trend of limiting color to cold tones. Paris pushed Picasso to a strong revival of the palette. Increasingly, paintings appeared with bouquets of flowers and nude models. If in Madrid the artist mainly worked in blue, now next to blue and green lay pure, often contrasting colors. A new style was making its way to the surface. The artist sometimes outlined wide color surfaces in blue, purple and green. This manner was called the "period of window panes."

At the beginning of 1903, Picasso returned to Barcelona and took up landscapes, almost all of them in blue. Landscape painting has always been the artist in some neglect. Picasso is not romantic enough to see nature as a source of inexhaustible inspiration. In reality, he is only interested in a person and what directly surrounds or touches a person.

The blue color is now softened by the proximity to ocher and pale lilac colors, united by a common pink tone. The blue period has entered a new, transitional phase, the time of itinerant theater and circus people.