Picasso

The 10 most famous works of Picasso (Málaga, October 25, 1881- Mougins, April 8, 1973)

Versatility, spontaneity, revolutionary creation, define Pablo Ruiz Picasso, native of Malaga born on October 25, 1881. He demonstrated artistic skills at an early age, so much that in 1895 he entered the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. In the “Els Quatre Gats”, he would gestate his conceptions of an art far from the tradition in which he had been trained and with which he would influence the most representative artistic processes of the 20th century would be developed.

In 1900, the death of Carlos Casagemas depresses him, inspiring him to paint portrays between 1901 to 1904, mortuary themes in a mostly blue palette, known as the blue epoch of the artist. In April of 1904, installed in Paris, he falls in love with the model Fernande Olivier, which inspires him to paint in pink which it becomes what is known as the artist’s rose time and it would last until 1906.

In 1907, together with Georges Braque, he would experience a pioneering art: Cubism and its various manifestations, with this attempt to defy the norms of exactly copying nature when venturing into the fracture of the two-dimensionality of the canvas. His most valuable career lasted more than 75 years and its fruits, more than 16,000, were not only paintings, but sculptures, engravings, ceramics, and others.

10 most famous works of Picasso

1. Life-1903- Museum of Fine Arts, Cleveland.

Work of great dimensions, perhaps the most symbolic and important of its blue period, the same, condenses the dismal atmosphere of that moment of his life in a simple composition with somehow rigid figures. This has been controversial for the studies that followed, however, many agree that the main debate in it is the dilemma of life and death wrapped in a range of blues that reflect the coldness of the subject.

2. The Dutch Beauty-1905-Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

A Picasso in love created this work during his vacation in the Netherlands in 1905, after entering into a relationship with his first stable partner, Fernande Olivier. The cold palette of a genius gives a warmer turn to be inspired by other themes opposed to those of his once blue era. This portrait of a Dutch woman, is one of the two most important that the artist produced in that country, being also symbolic in this era the themes of the circus world.

3. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon-1907-Museum of Modern Art, New York

The painting is considered the beginning of modern art and pictorial avant-garde of the 20th century, which can be found in the artist’s epoch-making period, since it marks the beginning of the use of geometric figures in the transformation and modification of reality, breaking with the canons of realism. The author affected by African, Greek and Iberian aspects creates “The young ladies of Avignon or the young ladies of the street of Avinyó” soaking their genesis, among others, in artists like El Greco and Cézanne.

4. Three Musicians-1921-Museum of Modern Art, New York

Putting an end to the period of Synthetic Cubism and delving into the intricate Analytical Cubism, Picasso manages to create a masterpiece of Art History in complexity and abstraction. “Three musicians” or “Musicians with masks”, paradigms of comedy, are a harlequin, a pierrot and a monk playing a musical instrument, these are broken down into simple and colored shapes with a palette that creates confusion between the background and the figures given the intention to neutralize the depth.

5. Seated Bather-1930-Museum of Modern Art, New York

From the cubist surrealist era, where the artist distorts the forms to represent the monstrous or mythological reminiscences, this work is born in which the dehumanization of the human figure collides with grace impregnated in details of extraordinary verisimilitude, with finely-crafted techniques to generate transparencies , femininity and sensuality in a deformed, anomalous but beautiful body, a peaceful beach and a luminous atmosphere. It belongs to a conspicuous compendium of works based on the same style and theme.

6. Girl before a Mirror-1932- Museum of Modern Art, New York

Listed as one of the works of great virtuosity of the author given the maturity and experience that demonstrates, as well as the psychological complexity that underlies it, is another of the portraits that Picasso would do to one of his lovers, in this case, the model Marie -Thérèse Walter still being married to Olga Koklova, the painting is an ode to the mixture of colors, the use of diamond shapes, circles, triangles without restriction and the continuity of planes.

7. Dora Maar au Chat-1937-Museo Nacional Reina Sofía Art Center, Madrid

Henriette Theodora Markovitch immortalized in this portrait as Dora Maar, was not the only one made by the author considered his muse during the creation phase of “Guernica”. He maintained a sentimental relationship with the virtuoso painter being his main model in the creation of emblematic portraits and effigies. Picasso managed to transfigure it and thereby symbolically communicate the agitated and insurrected Spanish political moment of that time as well as the personal-sentimental relationship that united them.

8. Guernica-1937-Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Masterpiece, colored in black and white and a wide palette of grays, tends to be considered a living expression of the Spain of 1937, expressionist era of the author in which his creations express feelings of anguish resulting from the problematic situation that was experienced then. With conflicting positions, the common referent around the interpretation of the work is the one that refers to it as an allusion to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

9. Weeping Woman-1937-Tate Gallery, London

It is another of the portraits of Dora Maar, a photographer partner of the artist, who modeled for him trying to present the anguish and pain of the Spanish woman during the Civil War. With blue and white tones exalt large hands and a mouth with teeth that bite a wrinkled handkerchief, in turn, vibrant yellow and red tones contain a distorted face of pain with lines and shapes that distort it to recreate the inner pain of the woman.

10. Las Meninas-1957-Picasso Museum, Barcelona

There were 58 paintings that Picasso elaborated in honor of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas’. A complete series where the genius of Cubism tried not to copy but to recreate and interpret, with its sharp language, palette and brush, the mastery of Velázquez trying to expose his vision on aspects such as light, volume, occupation of space or perspective that impregnate the work of this one, for it analyzed him exhaustively and the final product is a dramatic cubist reinterpretation.