Picasso

Author: (Spanish) Picasso
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: Picasso (1881–1973) was a Spanish-French painter. Born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, southern Spain, he passed away on April 8, 1973, in Mougins, France. From a young age, he showed a passion for art. During his studies at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, he left the school due to dissatisfaction with its conservative teaching methods and actively participated in salons with local cultural figures. The various artistic trends popular at the time, such as symbolism, critical realism, impressionism, naturalism, and aestheticism, all attracted him. His early creative period from 1900 to 1905 included self-portraits. Initially, his works used blue tones, later shifting to pink tones, depicting lonely, sorrowful figures such as the poor, disabled, and traveling performers. His representative works, such as The Woman Ironing, The Drinker of Absinthe, and The Family of Saltimbanques, all fall under the category of critical realism, carrying a strong tragic element and national flavor. His trip to Paris around 1904 broadened his horizons, and the new artistic trends and explorations there inspired and influenced him. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) marked the transition of his creative style to Cubism. He abandoned the traditional Western painting techniques and openly challenged the aesthetic principles established since the Renaissance. The painting contains no narrative or specific environmental description, only the structure of several planes. In such works, he depicted multiple aspects of an object without imitating its surface, while also introducing collage techniques into painting. Representative works include Girl with Mandolin, Portrait of Kahnweiler, and Still Life with Chair Caning.
After 1915, he developed an interest in the precise and detailed sketches of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and his style shifted from Cubism to Neoclassicism. His works The Race (1922) and Portrait of Igor Stravinsky used exaggerated techniques to express grandeur, becoming representative examples of this transformation. During the Spanish Civil War, he consistently stood with the Republic, opposing Franco's regime. Upon hearing the news of the fascist air force's brutal bombing of the civilian population in the Spanish town of Guernica, he created the mural Guernica to express his indignation. After the Nazi occupation of France, he maintained his patriotic integrity, painting in isolation in Paris and refusing fascist temptations. In 1944, he joined the French Communist Party, declaring that he would use painting as a weapon to resist and strike at the enemy. His large-scale oil painting The Memorial depicted the Nazi concentration camps, expressing his furious condemnation of fascist atrocities.
In the early 1950s of the 20th century, he actively participated in the movement to defend world peace. One of his prints, The Dove, was chosen as the emblem of the Paris Peace Congress. During this period, his other important works included The Massacre in Korea, War, and Peace, which not only exposed U.S. imperialist aggression against Korea but also used symbolic language to depict the destruction of human civilization by warmongers and humanity's longing for peace and happiness. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon marked Picasso's lifelong dedication to artistic innovation. By leveraging the achievements of Western modern philosophy, psychology, and natural sciences, and absorbing the richness of folk art, he created a highly expressive artistic language. His extreme distortion and exaggeration in art had a unique power in portraying the deformed capitalist society and the twisted relationships between people. His private collection, including his own works and those of his friends, was donated to the French government. The Picasso Museum was built in Paris.