Pablo Picasso (Spanish b. 1881-1973) Lithograph Portrait Imaginaires

Description

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain. The son of an academic painter, José Ruiz Blanco, he began to draw at an early age. In 1895, the Picasso family moved to Barcelona. It was there that Pablo studied at La Lonja, the local academy of fine arts.

It was in Paris where he observed the paintings of Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Picasso’s visual style and choice of subject matter developed dramatically over a short period of time. The Rose Period marked a brightening of Picasso’s palette: pinks, beiges, roses, and light blues. His choice of subject matter followed suit: clowns, harlequins, and saltimbanques (‘circus people’).

Picasso’s name is synonymous with the development of Cubism, which is the permutation of several artistic trends and of the styles of certain artists. Through Gertrude and Leo Stein, Picasso knew Henri Matisse, who had stirred audiences in 1905 with paintings displaying harsh, dissonant colors. Critics chided Matisse’s paintings, while Picasso admired them. He also admired the so-called ‘primitive’ works of Henri Rousseau. Through a collaboration with the artist Georges Braque, Picasso gradually combined his influences into a wholly original style, which fragmented three-dimensional forms into abstract geometric shapes that intertwined and overlapped each other. Picasso’s association with the Communist Party began in 1944, and in the latter half of the decade he lived in the southern France.