Pablo Picasso2 :: Essays Papers

Pablo Picasso2Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is considered to be the greatest artist of the 20th century. In his prolific career, which spanned 78 years, he created more than 20,000 works of art including paintings, lithographs, etchings, and sculpture. In 1947, for example, he created 2,000 pieces of ceramics and in 1968, in a seven-month period, he returned to some of his earlier themes such as circuses, and bullfights to create 347 etchings. His work encompassed many styles -- from realism to cubism and surrealism -- making it impossible to categorise into a single movement. He and fellow painter Georges Braque are credited with creating the cubist style. Another of Picassos innovations was the creation of collage -- he pasted pieces of paper and oilcloth to a canvas and painted on the surface in a 1912 work titled Still Life With Chair Caning. Although he is best known for his innovative, cubist work Picasso had an extraordinary drawing skill, rivaling the expertise of 19th century n eoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.Picasso was born in Mlaga, Spain on October 25, 1881, the son of an art teacher. anterior to 1898, he used his fathers name, Ruiz, and his mothers maiden name, Picasso, to sign his paintings. After 1901, he signed his work simply with the name Picasso. A child prodigy, he painted his root picture at the age of ten by 15 he was accepted at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts where he won a gold medal for his academic painting, Science & Charity, 1897.Picassos major periods can be roughly divided into the following, although in his later years he returned to earlier themes. secular PeriodAfter trips to Paris between 1900-1902, Picasso settled there in 1904 where he was influenced by Paul Gauguin and the group of symbolist painters called The Nabis. The influence of Edgar Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec is reflected in The Blue Room, 1901 -- which was the start of his evolution towards his Blue Period. In this phase, the color blue dominated his work as did the theme of portraying human suffering and misery, in many cases also reflecting the style of El Greco in the use of elongated figures.