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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.

After his birth on October 25, 1881, Pablo Picasso went on to become one of the premiere artists of the 20th century and of all time with his reimagining of the artistic form and constant questioning of how an artist interacts with their subject.
While Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, he spent the better part of his life living in Paris, France, studying with French artists such as Georges Braque. Primarily, his life’s work is recognized for the creation of Cubism with Braque, using geometric shapes and planes to represent realistic human and object forms.

He did not only paint though and he did not stop with Cubism. Picasso’s career was filled with numerous periods, notably the Blue and Rose period along with his Cubism period. He spent much of the latter two decades of his life focused on sculpture and a great deal of time experimenting with different painting styles that never fully took shape. In all, it is believed that he produced more than 20,000 works in his life time.

Early Accomplishments

It is the first period of his career, the Blue Period, which first brought acclaim and fame in the artistic community to Picasso. His blue period was marked by the painting of elongated images and lower casts of society in a mostly blue palette. Lasting from 1901 to 1904, his signature rejections of the artistic form had not yet developed.

In 1904 and 1905, Picasso entered what is known as the Rose Period of his career, highlighted by paintings in shades of red and pink. A triumphant painting from this period is his “Family of Saltimbanques”, a collection of circus performers, sharply contrasting with his earlier, Blue Period pieces.

In 1906, Picasso completed his portrait of Gertrude Stein, using a masked conceptual style to portray her, forgoing traditional portrait means. This was the first hint of his soon to be extraordinary departure from the standard forms of art in the day.

Early Cubism

Cubism was first developed in his 1907 shocker, Les demoiselles d’Avignon. The painting was the first of many to represent a static image in geometric, planed forms. From this point on, art began only to expand, taking on new concepts and ideas for expression of images and shapes.

Between 1908 and 1911, Picasso would work closely with George Braques, pushing his mastery and development of cubism to new levels. For years he would create the paintings that he became most famous for, unfolding and cross-sectioning the human body, common objects, and portraits in his masterpieces.

He would continue to paint almost constantly, straight into World War I, when he worked in Rome as a stage designer for the Ballets Russes.
Later life

During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Paris, Picasso’s work was not fully accepted or allowed, as it went against the traditional definitions of art laid down by the occupying German government. He would continue to paint however, having products smuggled in to him.

He was forever changed by the facism he witnessed during World War II though, and joined the French Communist Party a few years after the war had ended, in 1947. He went on to win the Lenin Peace Prize and was even able to keep his paintings from being displayed in Spain until after the end of facist rule there, almost 8 years after his death.

The final years of Picasso’s life, leading up to his death in 1973 of natural causes, were spent crafting sculptures in his wife, Jacqueline Roque, who owned a pottery studio in France. The two lived together for 12 years until his death.

Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso first learned to paint under the tutelage of his father, Jose Ruiz y Blasco, a professor of art known for his realistic depictions of birds. By 1894, when he was only thirteen, critics consider that Picasso’s adult career as a painter had begun. In 1896, at fourteen, Picasso painted two of his most well known works, The First Communion, depicting his sister, Lola, and Portrait of Aunt Pepa, which has been described as “one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting.” Both paintings are on display at the Museum Picasso in Barcelona, along with an extensive collection of Picasso’s early work.

In 1901, Picasso had moved to Paris and embarked on his Blue Period, portraying somber subjects in strong shades of blue and green, depicting an overall negativity that is attributed to several factors, including a trip back to Spain and the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Picasso painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in La Vie, currently displayed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Other noted works from Picasso’s Blue Period include Evocation and The Blindman’s Meal.

Next Picasso embarked on his Rose Period, a direct turnaround from the Blue Period, featuring warm colors and happier subjects. The inspiration for this period is generally attributed to Picasso’s meeting Fernande Olivier, an artist’s model. While it is not considered one of his greatest works, the most expensive Picasso painting, Garçon a la pipe (Boy with a Pipe), comes from this era. It sold at auction for more than 104 million dollars, prompting critics to say the purchaser was buying the name Picasso, and not a specific painting.

In 1907 Picasso began a brief period influenced by African tribal art, beginning with the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which portrays two African figurines. The African influence in Picasso’s work led directly to his developing Cubism with Georges Braque.

Cubism started with the school described as Analytical Cubism, inspired by the work of Paul Cezanne, who was known for breaking subjects down into their component figures. Picasso and Braque took this further, symbolizing the duality of human binocular vision by portraying all sides of a shape on one plane, and then breaking it down into simple round shapes. Picasso’s painting Ma Jolie most exemplifies the first movement of Cubism.

By 1912, Cubism had evolved, thanks to the influx of a new group of artists, including Juan Gris. The end result of this evolution was Synthetic Cubism, first exemplified by Picasso’s Still Life with Chair-caning. Synthetic Cubism represented a bringing together of more disparate elements after dividing them as in Analytic Cubism. Picasso also pioneered the use of text in these paintings, as a way of flattening the space in the paintings, as well as the incorporation of other mediums, producing mixed media works during this period.

After World War One, Picasso began to expand his frame of reference, starting with classical works referred to as neoclassical paintings, which represented a return to order for Picasso. This was represented in the works of many European artists following the First World War. This led to Picasso’s experimenting with Surrealism, which led to his most famous work, Guernica, an inspired and moving composition depicting the German bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Guernica is currently on display at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.

Picasso experimented with a series of different styles in the later part of his career, following World War Two. He became known for his portrayals of works by Grand Master painters, and his sculpture. He was commissioned to make a model for a huge 50-foot public sculpture in Chicago, known simply as the Chicago Picasso or just The Picasso. It stands on Daley Plaza in the Chicago Loop. The statue was erected in 1967, just a few years before Picasso’s death in France in 1973.

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881, the first child of Maria Picasso y Lopez and Jose Ruiz y Blasco. He was born into a family that appreciated art from the beginning, with his father also a painter and professor of art. He spent a great deal of time in his childhood learning to draw and attending formal academic training in the arts. He attended numerous art schools as a child and studied occasionally with his father; however, he never finished his college education in art, dropping out after only one year.

After leaving his art studies in Madrid, Picasso lived for a short while in Paris with Max Jacob, a poet and journalist of the time. Jacob taught Picasso to speak French and the two shared an apartment in the cold of the Paris winter. He eventually ended up burning much of his earliest work merely to stay warm.

In 1901, Picasso founded Arte Joven with his friend Soler in Madrid, a magazine which he fully illustrated. For the next three years, Picasso would spend his time split between both Barcelona and Paris. In 1904 Picasso met Fernande Olivier, the subject of so many of his Rose period paintings. After the successive fame and fortune that found Picasso in these early years, he left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, known to many and Picasso as Eva – the subject of many Cubist paintings.
Picasso became well known for his group of friends in Paris, including the likes of Andre Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein. In 1911, Apollonaire and Picasso were both questioned in regards to the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, an event they were famously cleared of in short order.

Picasso was notorious for his love life. He would often have multiple mistresses, as well as a wife or partner with whom he lived. In the course of his life, he married twice and had four children with three different women.
Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, his first wife, in 1918, a ballerina in Diaghilev’s troupe and purveyor of high society. She introduced Picasso to the tendencies of high society and eventually bore his son, Paulo. The two would clash though, disagreeing on the nature of their relationship, and Picasso’s bohemian lifestyle. In 1927, Picasso started an affair with Maria-Therese Walter, in effect ending his marriage to Khokhlova. The two never divorced, as Picasso did not want to be forced to give half of his wealth to his wife, remaining married until she died in 1955.

During World War Two, Picasso was not permitted to share his work in public as the Nazi government ruling Paris did not believe it was considered artistic. He continued to paint in his studio though the whole while, having bronze smuggled into his studio for use in his art.

After Paris was liberated in 1944, Picasso was able to publicly paint again and soon became involved with Francoise Gilot, a young art student and eventually the mother of his two youngest children, Claude and Paloma. She, however, left Picasso in 1953, claiming his abuse and infidelity as the cause – something none of his other lovers did.

Picasso underwent a long period of self reflection after Gilot left him, both coming to term with the fact that he was rapidly aging, now in his 70s, and that his philandering ways were no longer appreciated by younger women. He penned many drawings that explored his own feelings of physical inadequacy, pitting himself as a dwarf against a beautiful young girl. Some of these drawings were famously sold by Genevieve Laporte, a woman who Picasso engaged in a six week long affair with and penned many of these images of.

After his tryst with Laporte, Picasso took up with Jacqueline Roque, who worked at Madoura Pottery in Vallauris. The two would eventually marry in 1961 and spend the rest of Picasso’s life together. Picasso used the marriage to Roque to exact a small degree of revenge upon Gilot for leaving him as well, keeping her children from gaining the legitimacy she desired for them along with the financial dependence that their marriage could provide.

The end of his life was spent living in luxury as a celebrity. His life had been celebrated in equal measure to his art work and thus his appearances in films such as Jean Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus or Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso were chances for him to play himself and satiate the public’s interest in his life.

Picasso died in Mougins, France on April 8, 1973 while entertaining friends at dinner. He was interred in Vauvenargues in a famously tense funeral, at which Roque did not permit Claude or Paloma, the two children Picasso had blocked from legitimacy, from attending.