Picasso: Shaping Modern Art

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and a playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. He was born on 25 October 1881 and passed away on April 08 1973. His colourful career lasted for more than eighty years. He is considered as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Being a versatile artist with a varied skill set, he experimented a lot with different theories, ideas, and techniques. He is credited with the invention of constructed sculpture, co-founding Collage and Cubism and a whole lot of other varieties of style he helped develop. In the process, he shaped the history of modern art as we know it today.

His most famous works include what is considered as the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the year 1907, and Guernica in the year 1937, a theatrical portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian air forces. Picasso showcased extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner throughout his childhood and adolescence.

After 1906, Picasso's muse became the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse and it lured him to explore more radical styles--which began a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who in due course were paired by critics as the 'leaders of modern art'.

Picasso's work is can be compartmentalised into periods. Whilst the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period, lasting four years, the Rose Period, lasting another two, the African-influenced Period, for further two years, Analytic Cubism, for a good three years and Synthetic Cubism lasting a lofty seven year period and is also referred to as the Crystal period. His later work introduces elements of his earlier styles which was exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life. Picasso, also achieved universal renouncement and bags full of fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and is still considered as one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

Picasso, the first child of his parents born in the city of Málaga in Spain was the son of a conventional artist and instructor who began Picasso’s training and skill development at a young age. Picasso proved to be a prodigal child, already painting with an innate natural instinct and a touch of perfection at the mere age of thirteen.

He was admitted into Madrid's finest art school at the tender age of sixteen but like many other revolutionaries, of his time he disagreed with the education system and dropped out. Over the span of his career he has worked with a varied range of styles and has adopted each with such remarkable efficiency that his entire collection of work often comes out to be an assemblage of different artists, of different time period rather than one.

No artist has ever been able to keep their art as something completely separate from their personal lives and the same is true for Picasso. His personal life is mirrored in a lot of his works and at many points, one seems to be shaping the other. He had many relationships, was married twice and fathered four children all of which have found an allusion in his paintings.

Though he collaborated with a lot of artists his venture with Georges Braque, which resulted in the invention of Cubism, remains particularly distinguished as the most productive one.

Picasso died at the age of 91 and left behind an artistic legacy which is so rich that it resonates well in the decades that follow and helps in shaping and re-shaping contemporary modern art and remains a center of fascination even today. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has been tagged as “the house that Pablo built” since it displays a wide variety of his exhibits.

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Featured Images: Photos for Class