Did You Know?
Happy Birthday Pablo Picasso!
Pablo Picasso was born today in 1881. Picasso is indisputably the most famous artist of the 20th century. Picasso was a painter, a sculptor, ceramicist, stage designer and a printmaker who once said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
Below are eight statements. Some are truths about Picasso, and others are lies, do you know which is which? Test your Picasso knowledge. Answers to questions at the bottom, so no cheating!
- Picasso was born in France, however he lived in Spain most of his life.
- His full name is 122 characters long.
- His first words were “piz, piz”, a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for ‘pencil’.
- Picasso entered the School of Fine Arts in La Coruna, but it was mostly his mother who t to financial problems, when he lived in Paris, Picasso burned many of his paintings to stay warm.aught him painting.
- Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13.
- Due to financial problems when he lived in Paris, Picasso burned many of his paintings to stay warm.
- Picasso is credited for co-founding the Surrealist movement, along with Georges Braque.
- During the German occupation of Paris during WWII, Picasso was forbidden from showing his paintings
This period was influenced in part by the suicide of friend, Carlos Casagemos, of whom Picasso painted many portraits following his death. The paintings of this period are somber, in blue and green tones with many depictions of very thin mothers, children, prostitutes and beggars, and blindness as a recurring theme.
Picasso’s work, influenced by his relationship with Fernande Olivier, takes on a happier tone during this period. He used lots of orange and pink in his paintings. His art often featured acrobats and harlequin, which became a personal symbol for Picasso.
This is a lesser known artistic period for Picasso. His artwork during this period was heavily influenced by African sculpture and artifacts.
The style for which Picasso is known. He developed this artistic movement with Georges Braque. In the cubist style, “objects are broken up, “analyzed,” and re-assembled in an abstracted form.
Cubism paved the way to Synthetic Cubism. In this style, cut paper pieces were pasted together to create compositions, and marked the use of collage in fine art.
Classicism & Surrealism
In the period following World War I, Picasso’s work was in a neoclassical style. During the 1930’s, influenced by his contact with surrealists, the minotaur took the place of the harlequin as a common motif in Picasso’s work.
Containing this symbol is one of the greatest works and arguably Picasso’s most famous, his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War. This mural sized oil on canvas contains heavy symbolism and is a strong anti-war image. When asked about the painting, Picasso responded with: “…this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.” Guernica is displayed in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain.
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