Acopy of Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica, hangs in the University cafeteria in Swansea, Wales and made me curious to look up the life and times of Pablo Picasso – one of the greatest contemporary artists of our times.
“That piece of modern art by Picasso is referred to as one of the most important works of art of the 20th century,” said Susan Williams, a final year art student at the university. “On April 26, 1937, a massive air raid by the German Luftwaffe on the Basque town of Guernica in Northern Spain shocked the world. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the raid which became a major incident of the Spanish Civil War. The bombing prompted Picasso to begin painting his greatest masterpiece, Guernica. The painting became a timely and prophetic vision of the World War II and is now recognised as an international icon for peace, the modern art’s most powerful anti-war statement.
Despite the enormous interest the painting generated in his lifetime, Picasso obstinately refused to explain Guernica's imagery. Guernica has been the subject of more books than any other work in modern art, yet its meanings have, to this day, eluded scholars.”
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. His name Picasso is Italian, possibly Genoese in origin but the artist believed it was originally Spanish and spelt Picazo. His father Jose Ruiz Blasco came from Northern Spain with Basque blood in his ancestry. His mother Maria Picasso was from Malaga. As it is customary in Spain, Picasso was at liberty to use both his father and his mother’s family names. He was known at first as Pablo Ruiz but at the time of his first exhibition in 1897, he added his mother’s name to his signature – P Ruiz Picasso. Later in 1901, he dropped his father’s name, Ruiz, altogether as Picasso sounded more unusual and distinguished than Ruiz.
Jose Ruiz was an art teacher and Picasso showed exceptional talent from the time he was very young. His initial art education was at his father’s highly competent knee. In 1896, the family moved to Barcelona where Picasso joined the School of Fine Arts.
In 1900, Picasso moved to Paris and in 1901, he began to use a pervasive blue tone in his paintings which soon became almost monochrome and what was later known as his Blue Period, which lasted till 1904. Whatever the source, and it was probably from within his soul, the lugubrious tone was in harmony with the heavy handed pathos of the subject matter. Poverty-stricken mothers, tired and wan harlots and blind beggars were his focus. During this time, he gave up his landscapes and dance halls and concentrated on single figures, against an obscure back drop. He was penniless and lived in a dilapidated tenement in Montmartre where lots of his artist friends lived.
In 1905, he moved into his Circus Period which was more natural with a melancholy sweetness. He painted jugglers and acrobats, clowns and circus people in harlequin tights. His gouache ‘Two acrobats with a dog’ painted in 1905 is evocative of the time. Colour too was used with more variety and subtlety, with a more delicate hand and sentiment thrown in for good measure.
It was in 1906 to 1908 that Picasso changed the direction of his art. Cezanne, Rousseau and Braque formed the famous artists who contributed to this new direction – Cubism – other than Picasso himself. It was, however, the quality and power of Picasso’s art that made cubism the characteristic movement in the art world in the first quarter of the 20th century. The culmination of Picasso’s labours in 1907 is an extraordinary painting named ‘Les Demoiselles D’Avignon’. The most radical difference between the right and the left sides of this painting lies in the heads of the two figures. The faces to the right seem inspired by the masks of the Ivory Coast.
Though Picasso apparently denied this, the ‘surreal’ faces in his paintings 20 years later, mirrored this style. This painting, along with Matisse’s Joie de Vivre of the same year, marked the beginning of a new period in modern art history.
In Picasso’s own words, “Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same elements and the same principles apply. The fact that Cubism has not been understood for a very long time means nothing. I do not read English. This does not mean that the English language does not exist.”
Picasso’s life in Paris during the German occupation has been embellished as his art was an anathema to Hitler. However, his stature and world wide fame kept him safe in Paris from the Germans, but he was forbidden to exhibit publicly. His old friend Max Jacob died in a concentration camp in 1944. Strangely, Picasso did not join the underground resistance movement, but his attitude was implacable and uncompromising.. Picasso died in his 90s and left his art to the Louvre in Paris. He was buried on the grounds of his chateau in Paris. In 1981, his famous painting ‘Guernica’ was sent to Spain from New York and now takes pride of place in Madrid's Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina in Sofía.
