Although well known for many of his works, art critics generally consider Picasso’s most important contribution to the history of art to be his development of what is known as Cubism with French painter Georges Braque.

Over a period of roughly ten years, from 1909 to 1919, Picasso and Braque, incorporating elements from Picasso’s previous African-inspired period, started not just a new school of art, but a new way of looking at the world. By the end of the Cubism movement, not only had Picasso and Braque influenced the worlds of painting and sculpture, but also inspired related movements in music and literature as well.

The roots of Cubism are often credited to Paul Cézanne, whose later work displayed two distinct tendencies: Breaking a painting down into small multifaceted areas of paint, emphasizing a pluralistic viewpoint, and simplifying natural forms into basic geometric symbols.

Braque and Picasso took this much further, representing all the surfaces of an object on a single plane, as if all the planes of an object were visible at the same time. While the two of them are credited as developing Cubism together, Picasso is usually credited as influencing Braque to move away from his current period of work called Fauvism. Braque and Picasso were later joined by Juan Gris in spreading the gospel of Cubism. The three of them worked together in developing Cubism until the outbreak of World War One in Europe in 1914.

The term Cubism was coined by Louis Vauxcelles, a French art critic, in describing a painting of Braque’s. The term did not initially gain popularity, however, as the two Cubists themselves did not embrace the term. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described Cubism as “The most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture.” The end result of the labors of the Cubists was to leave no doubt in the mind of the viewer what was being portrayed and how.

By 1911, the term ‘Cubist School’ was being used to refer to students and imitators of Picasso and Braque, who’s initial Cubic works were so similar as to be sometimes difficult to tell apart. Many of the artists who identified with the Cubists, however, did not follow in their footsteps.

Calling themselves the Section d’Or (Golden Section), they were also known as the Puteaux Group, but history identifies them as a loose, collaborative group of artists that are now best known as the Orphists, an offshoot of the Cubist movement, if not actually Cubists themselves.

World War One spelled the death knell for the Cubist movement, although an exhibition of Jacques Villon’s in New York City brought the movement to America, prolonging its life. The influences of Cubism continued until the end of the decade, in 1919, but the effects of two men intentionally starting from scratch and finding a new way of looking at art and the world, has been felt ever since.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso, more famously known simply as Picasso, is famous for being one of the founders of cubism, and inspiring a return to classicism later in his life. However, a large body of his work has been overshadowed by iconic works such as Guernica and his association with cubism.

Picasso’s Blue Period, while less famous than his cubism, is also well-known, the subject of many a trivia question, and the inspiration for critics to divide other artist’s work into periods of significance.

What is substantially less famous, however, is Picasso’s Rose Period, which immediately followed his Blue Period. While the Blue Period focused on pictures of the downtrodden and the lower classes, with not only blue colors, but a blue attitude as well. With the Rose Period, Picasso changed his work completely. The only commonality between the two periods, other than Picasso’s unique genius, is a use of harlequins and other circus imagery that would continue throughout his career.

Where his work had once been sad and depressing, Picasso’s paintings were now exciting and joyful, with colors like orange and pink substituting for the somber blues of his earlier period. While the Blue Period lasted from 1901 to 1904, the Rose Period lasted from 1905 to 1907. It has been suggested that the paintings reflected Picasso’s newfound happiness based on his relationship with Fernande Olivier, whom he met in 1904.

While Picasso was born in Spain, he spent most of his working career in Paris, including both the Blue and the Rose Periods. While the Blue Period is considered influenced by his Spanish roots, the Rose Period is considered the first of Picasso’s French-influenced periods of work. It is worth noting that Picasso had moved beyond what was considered his ‘Early Work’ and had already gone through two completely different Periods by 1907, when he was only 26.

While the Rose Period is not as famous as Picasso’s Blue Period, it is remarkable that the Picasso painting that has sold for the most money at auction was produced during the Rose Period. Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a Pipe) painted in 1905, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York City on May 5, 2004. At the end of the the bidding, the painting sold for $104.1 million, although critics have said that the price may have had more to do with the artist’s name rather than the merits of the particular painting.

Picasso’s Blue Period
Marking the beginning of his career, Picasso’s Blue Period is among the most prolific beginnings to any artist’s career in the history of modern art. Well before he started producing what he would become internationally known for, well after his death in the form of Cubism, Picasso painted basically monochromatic, blue and green shaded works. These paintings, now among his most popular, were born of the somber mood he experienced in Spain, but were largely affected by his move and location in Paris.

Picasso moved from Spain to Paris midway through the year 1901 and it is unclear when he first started painting the images most readily associated with this period – in Spain or in Paris. What is known though is that this period in Picasso’s career was directly affected by his travels through Spain and the suicide of close friend Carlos Casagemas. Casagemas took his own life on February 18, 1901 in Paris, by shooting himself.

To this point, Picasso had already started to enjoy some small bit of acclaim for his vibrant early paintings, depicting much less somber subjects. However, Picasso himself is quoted as having said that he “started painting in blue when [he] learned of the Casagema’s death.” It was an almost instant change in his style, the kind of sudden shift that would come to define his career.

In that latter half of 1901, after it is generally agreed that Picasso’s palette shifted to all blues and greens, and he started depicting prostitutes, beggars, and drunkards, he painted a collection of portraits of his deceased friend Casagemas. These portraits led up to the eventual completion of La Vie, a masterpiece he completed in 1903 that currently sits in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Another work that has become representative of Picasso’s Blue Period is The Frugal Repast, painted in 1904 and depicting a couple, one blind and one with sight, starving to death and sitting at an empty table. Picasso repeatedly utilized the theme of blindness in his Blue Period paintings, as seen in The Blindman’s Meal, painted in 1903, and Celestina, also painted in 1903.

Picasso painted numerous other subjects that might not otherwise be depicted in the somber blues and downtrodden themes of his Blue Period paintings. These included individuals such as fellow artists, circus performers, or checker clad harlequins. Harlequins would become a recurrent character in many of Picasso’s works in years to come.

The most famous of Picasso’s Blue Period paintings is likely The Old Guitarist. This image portrays a blind old man clothed in rags, hunched over his guitar. Painted in 1903, the work now resides in The Art Institute of Chicago.

As an emotional precursor to the more vibrant, lively Rose Period and the analytical, departure ridden Cubism, the Blue Period represents a time in Picasso’s life when he was young (only 20 years old in 1901) and coming to terms with his life and the new found fame he was rapidly acquiring. The death of his close friend represented his growth into adulthood and a loss of innocence, all expressed and followed in his paintings from this period.