There are opposing judgments about the role of the blue and pink periods in the creative biography of Picasso. Some believe that these periods remained unsurpassed: then Picasso was a true humanist artist, and then, succumbing to the temptations of modernism and possessed by the demon of destruction, he never reached the heights of his youth. With more or less categoricalness, such an assessment was expressed in our press, and partially in the foreign press. But in most books and articles by foreign authors, a different idea is carried out: in the blue and pink periods, Picasso was not yet himself, he remained in line with traditionalism, and therefore they are not of great importance, compared with subsequent ones.
Both of these extreme views are unfair. They equally come not so much from the artist's creations themselves, but from preconceived notions about realism and modernism, about traditionalism and innovation. In both cases, the main criterion of value is the attitude of the artist to the Renaissance concept of fine art - its overcoming or, on the contrary, preservation. Meanwhile, for Picasso himself, this moment was apparently not decisive - judging at least by how often he switched from “traditional” forms to “destructive” forms and vice versa, or used them simultaneously, refusing once and for all to prefer one over the other. The first break with tradition was sharp and dramatic, but later on the antagonism of the two modes of representation turned out to be, as it were, removed. Between them, many transitional links were found. Both the most "accurate" and the most "conditional" images of Picasso are related to his general creative concept as special cases, and in this sense they are equal.
The blue and pink periods are not absolute peaks for the creator of Guernica. Nevertheless, even if Picasso's creative history had ended in 1906, if he had remained only the author of "blue" and "pink" canvases, he would have gone down in history as a great artist.
Twenty-year-old Picasso was already quite an original master. The process of student perception and elimination of academism, the sentimental genre (and then impressionism and post-impressionism) began with him, as we have seen, unusually early and proceeded densely. By the beginning of the blue period, all this was left behind. If the softly fluffy, golden-greenish “Lady with a Dog” (1900) reproduces (and at the same time covertly parodies) the coloristic and textured gourmandism of late impressionism; if the sinister cocotte in a red hat (1900) reminds of Toulouse-Lautrec, the washing woman in the blue room (1901) - of Degas, then in such works of 1901 as "Girl with a Dove", as masterpieces of the Shchukin collection - "Embrace", “Harlequin and his wife”, “Portrait of Sabartes”, Picasso already looks like only himself. (It is impossible not to marvel at the taste and insight of the Moscow collector Shchukin, who selected from the many works of the young artist exactly those where the real Picasso was.)
At first glance, Picasso's pre-Cubist things bear little resemblance to later ones. But they contain the origins of his innermost themes and motives, the overture of his work.
K. Jung, approaching the art of Picasso as a psychoanalyst, saw in the blue period a complex of descent into hell. And in fact: at the entrance to this twilight, desert blue world of metaphysical poverty and silent suffering, the words, as it were, are inscribed: "I am taking me to the outcast villages."
Picasso then lived in the midst of semi-poor bohemia, starving and in poverty, sometimes he had to heat the stove with piles of his drawings - but least of all personal adversity determined the tone of his art. The poet Max Jacob recalled that time: "We lived badly, but beautifully." Picasso was always surrounded by friends, he was full of energy and love of life, but as an artist he was looking for cruel, hurting impressions. He was drawn to the bottom. He visited insane asylums, hospitals for prostitutes, watched and painted the sick for a long time in order to nourish and harden his soul with the spectacle of suffering. In his drawings of those years there are flashes of gloomy humor. Once he painted on the wall of one of his friends' workshop a terrible symbolic scene - a Negro hanged from a tree, a naked couple making love under a tree.
The blue period covers 1901-1904. Then Picasso had not yet settled permanently in France, he often moved from Barcelona to Paris and back to Barcelona. The painting of the blue period is rooted in the tradition of Spain. After passing experiences "in the French spirit", numerous but short-lived, Picasso's mature talent rediscovered his Spanish nature - in everything: in the theme of proud poverty and sublime squalor, in the combination of cruel "naturalism" with ecstatic spirituality, in Goya-type humor, in addiction to the symbolism of life and death. The largest and most complex of the paintings of the early period - "The Entombment of Kazagemas" (painted under the impression of the suicide of Picasso's friend) - is built like El Greco's "The Burial of Count Orgas": below - mourning for the dead, above - a scene in heaven, where in the atmosphere of a mystical vision frivolous images from the cabaret world are intertwined. In style, this is close to what the artist was doing even before his first visit to Paris: for example, in the large watercolor "The Way" (1898), depicting a symbolic procession with funeral drogues and a line of hunched old women and women with children - they wander up the mountain, there they a huge owl awaits, spreading its wings. (We will meet these funeral drogs half a century later in the panel "War", and the owl is an invariable attribute of Picasso's art.)
The “Two Sisters” are symbolic - two tired, exhausted women wrapped in veils, a prostitute and a nun, meeting, as Elizabeth and Mary meet in old paintings. “Life” is symbolic - a strange, deliberately constructed composition: love, motherhood, loneliness, a thirst for salvation from loneliness.
Gradually, the symbolism of Picasso is freed from the too obvious taste of allegory. The compositions become outwardly simple: on a neutral shimmering blue background, one or more often two figures, painfully fragile, pressed against each other; they are calm, submissive, thoughtful, withdrawn. The "pre-Cubist" Picasso has no still lifes: he paints only people.
In French painting of the beginning of the century, the blue paintings of Picasso look apart, for Spain they are organic. The French friends of the young Picasso felt the presence of an alien beginning in him, he was not fully understood by them. Maurice Reynal later wrote: “Something mysterious enveloped his personality, at least for us, not accustomed to the Spanish mindset: the contrast between the painful and heavy strength of his art and his own cheerful nature, between his dramatic genius and his cheerful disposition, struck.
Picasso, like Van Gogh before, although in a very different way than Van Gogh, came with a thirst to express his innermost understanding of the world. For this reason alone, he (like Van Gogh) could not succumb to the charm of impressionism: contemplation, the lulling bliss of “appearances” was not for him; in the name of active inner comprehension, he had to break through the shell of the visible.
The activity of the approach has long been associated with the primacy of the drawing, and the young Picasso began by returning to the drawing its dominant importance, did it more decisively and stronger than Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. The power of the line is set off by the monochrome of the blue paintings. The bluish figures do not sink into the blue of the background, but stand out distinctly, although they themselves are almost the same color as the background and are mainly outlined. Inside the contour, light and shade and color modeling are minimal, in the background there is no illusory depth created by perspective, but the contour itself creates the impression of volume - volume on a plane. (This is clearly seen, for example, in the greenish-blue study of a naked woman from the back: there is almost no modeling here - all the rich plasticity of this back, the direction of the volumes, the fullness of the form are conveyed by the contour line.)
Picasso was even then an incomparable draftsman. Sabartes recalled that, watching Picasso at work, he was amazed at the confidence of the movements of his hand: it seemed that the hand was only circling the invisible outlines already existing on the canvas.
"Blue style" - a challenge to impressionism painting, a refusal to obey the dictates of visual perception, a resolutely taken attitude towards a structural, built, created image. And subsequently, Picasso never, in all his transformations, did not change this initial principle.
Researchers note the special significance of the theme of blindness in the works of the early period. The composition "Breakfast of the Blind" in several versions, the painting "Blind Guitarist", a blind old man with a boy, drawings depicting a blind man with a guide, a sculpture - the head of a blind woman. And the sighted behave almost like the blind. Their eyes are either half-closed or wide open, but motionless, people do not look at each other, communicating with touches, groping movements of the hands. The hands in the paintings of early Picasso - with long fingers, thin, exorbitantly sensitive "Gothic" hands - these are the hands of the blind, the hands are eyes.
Why such a passion for the blind? Is it only from the desire to express the extreme deprivation of people or symbolically show their groping in a foreign world? Apparently, something else is hidden here: the idea of the clairvoyance of blindness, which is at the same time the clairvoyance of love. Penrose connects the theme of blindness with the artist's constant dissatisfaction with the external, visually perceived aspect of phenomena. “The external aspect always seemed to him insufficient. Somewhere at the point of convergence of sensory perception with the deep spheres of the mind, there is, as it were, an inner eye that sees and understands with the power of feeling. He can perceive, understand and love even when perception by physical sight is impossible. This perception is even more intense when the window to the outside world is tightly closed. One of Picasso's enigmatic sayings of a later time becomes clear: “Everything depends on love. It's always about that. Artists should have their eyes gouged out like goldfinches are gouged out so that they sing better.
Problems that are considered to be "purely plastic" - drawing and color, space, shape, deformation - confronted Picasso as human problems: communication, understanding, penetration. What brings people together, what saves them from the pangs of loneliness? Is it that they consider each other? No, they feel each other with some other, sixth sense. And shouldn't the artist, in his comprehension of things, also go beyond what he simply sees with the help of the sixth sense? Picasso always honored the owl - a bird that is blind during the day, but vigilant in the dark.
In his "descent into hell" Picasso tasted all the sadness of human poverty, but did not feel hopelessness - it is more like purgatory than hell. Hope is not taken away from his cripples and vagabonds, because the gift of love is not taken away. There are no paintings by Picasso that exude such icy loneliness as Van Gogh's green and red Café. He constantly shows how two beings strive to be together, inseparably and silently - this is perhaps the main internal theme of the blue period.
It is expressed most directly in the numerous versions of The Embrace. Perhaps the most eloquent is a quick charcoal sketch of 1901: there is no man and woman apart, no hugging - there is a hug, no two people - there is love of two people. This early drawing is somewhat reminiscent of Picasso's much later compositions, where he metaphorically depicted lovers through two merging profiles included in one another.
Picasso interpreted the motif of the embrace with absolute chastity: there is no eroticism here, rather spiritual eros in the Platonic sense reigns. Actually, the erotic in the work of Picasso always sounds menacing, gloomy, is associated with the theme of violence and cruelty - this, perhaps, is also a Spanish trait, so unlike the cheerful sensuality cultivated by French art.
In the art of Picasso, sensual passion is one of the varieties of enmity, "war", the sphere of action of destructive forces. When he wants to talk about love that brings people together, he banishes the element of sensuality. Sometimes he even makes his characters as if sexless (critics wrote about the "features of an androgyne"). Dystrophic thinness, haggardness, drooping fatigue of a man and a woman sitting, hugging and falling asleep at an empty table, exclude erotic associations: the desire of two abandoned people to save each other has a different, spiritual nature.
These “two”, protected by love, are only in some cases a man and a woman, a husband and wife, and more often other couples: an old man and a boy, a mother and a child, two sisters, or even a man and an animal: a boy with a dog, a woman with crow, little girl with a dove.
All these characters are outlined in compactly closed contours - their poses themselves are such as if they involuntarily strive to occupy as little space as possible in order to be invisible or warm: they clasp their hands, pick up their legs, pull their heads into their shoulders. When there are two of them, sometimes both figures are included in this closed, closed configuration and "turn into one" almost literally.
It seems that Picasso is especially fond of such subjects where the weak protect the weak. He revived the old theme of the mother guarding the child, and it must be admitted that the best of his "Motherhoods" belong to the early days. The feeling of languishing tenderness for a small helpless creature, the young Picasso probed to the very depths and discovered in him something bordering on pain. At first glance, in the manneristic grace of his "Mothers" there is, as it were, a certain chill, but it is a chill, the point of a needle touching a naked heart.
One of the earliest works of the blue period is “Girl with a Dove”: a little girl carefully holds a dove between her palms. One can see here the first birth of one of the cross-cutting themes of Picasso, passing - explicitly or covertly, roundly, symbolically or directly - through his long work. It is related to the legend of Saint Christopher, who carried the Christ child through a turbulent stream.
To protect the coming day, to carry life, weak and trembling like a candle flame, through the upheavals of the age - this is the theme of hope; after many years, it turned into Picasso's theme of the world. More than forty years after The Girl with the Dove, he made a statue of the Man with the Lamb: a frightened lamb trembles and tears, the man carries it calmly and as carefully as a girl holds a dove. Many of Picasso's motifs, constantly pursuing him, are located around this hidden center: children playing, whom someone strong protects from a monster (such compositions are among the preparatory drawings for the "Temple of Peace"); awake near the sleeping; suffering injured animals; finally, the motif of a candle or a torch - a lamp that illuminates the darkness: the genius of light, bursting into the hell of Guernica, holds a candle in his outstretched hand. Sometimes weakness turns out to be strength, and brutal strength - helplessness: in a series with a minotaur, we see a child who confidently leads a blind, weakened half-beast.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Picasso left Spain with his friend K. Casajemas and came to Paris. Here, Pablo is closely acquainted with the works of the French Impressionists, in particular, A. Toulouse-Lautrec and E. Degas, who in due time will have a serious influence on the development of the artist's creative thought.
Unfortunately, in love with a French woman and rejected by her, Casajemas commits suicide in February 1901. The boundaries of real life and art for Picasso have always been inseparable, and this tragic event, which deeply shocked the artist, was reflected in his subsequent works.
Since 1901, multi-color paints have been leaving Picasso's paintings, giving way to shades of a blue-green palette. The "blue" period begins in the artist's work.
A deep, cold and gloomy range of emerald, blue, blue, green colors and shades perfectly conveys the main themes of Picasso's work of this period - human suffering, death, old age, poverty and despondency. The paintings are filled with images of the blind, prostitutes, beggars and alcoholics, saturated with a sense of longing and hopelessness. During this period, the artist, without stopping to lead a bohemian lifestyle, works, creating up to three paintings a day. The Blue Room (1901), The Blind Man's Breakfast (1903), The Beggar Old Man with the Boy (1903), The Tragedy (1903), The Two (1904) and, of course, the famous Absinthe Drinker (1901 ) - all these are vivid examples of paintings of the "blue" period.
In 1904, Picasso settled in Bateau Lavoir - the famous hostel in Montmartre, where many artists found their refuge. At this time, he meets his muse - the model Fernando Olivier, who became the inspiration for many of his famous works. And acquaintance with the poets M. Jacob and G. Apollinaire gives a new theme, embodied in his paintings - the circus and the life of circus artists. So, gradually, new colors begin to penetrate into the life and work of the artist. The “pink” period of the master’s artistic searches is replacing the “blue” one.
At this time, the artist turns to more cheerful tones - pink, smoky pink, golden pink, ocher. The heroes of the paintings are clowns, acrobats, gymnasts, harlequins: "Acrobat and young Harlequin" (1905), "Family of acrobats with a monkey" (1905), "Jester" (1905). The theme of the romantic life of wandering artists is revealed in one of his most iconic and recognizable paintings - "Girl on a Ball" (1905).
Later, at the end of the "pink" period, the artist paints paintings in the spirit of the ancient heritage - "Girl with a goat" (1906), "Boy leading a horse" (1906).
The "blue" and subsequent "pink" periods of Pablo Picasso's creative life became an expression of his quest to convey the mood and his vision of the world with the help of color.
Although he himself came from a bourgeois background, and his habits and way of thinking were bourgeois, his painting was not bourgeois.
In 1896, Picasso's father rented a workshop for his son Pablo Picasso Ruiz on Calle de la Plata, where he could now work without coercion and supervision and do whatever he liked. The following year, his parents sent him to Madrid.
The artist who largely determined the nature of Western European and American art of the twentieth century was Pablo Picasso, a Spaniard who lived most of his life in France.
In 1900, Picasso and his friend Casachemes left for Paris. They settled in a studio recently vacated by another Catalan painter, Isidre Nonell. It was there, in Paris, that Pablo Picasso became acquainted with the work of the Impressionists. His life at this time is fraught with many difficulties, and the suicide of his friend Casajemes had a profound effect on the young Picasso. Under these circumstances, at the beginning of 1902, he began to make works in the style, subsequently called the "blue period". Picasso develops this style upon his return to Barcelona, in 1903-1904. The heroes of his paintings of the “blue” and “pink” periods are ordinary women, acrobats, itinerant circus actors, beggars. Even works devoted to the theme of motherhood are imbued not with happiness and joy, but with the mother's anxiety and concern for the fate of the child.
blue period.
The beginning of the "blue period" is usually associated with the artist's second trip to Paris. Indeed, he returns to Barcelona by Christmas 1901 with completed and begun canvases, painted in a completely different manner than that in which he has worked until now.
In 1900, Picasso met the graphics of Theophile Steinlen. He is interested in the color aggressiveness of northern artists, but it was at this time that he significantly limited his own color material. Everything happened quickly, sometimes even simultaneously. Picturesque works, pastels or drawings were constantly changing in style, in expression. The theme and nature of the works, which are separated by several weeks, and sometimes even days, can be radically different. Picasso had an excellent visual memory and susceptibility. He is more of a master of shade than color. Painting for the artist rests primarily on a graphic basis.
Sadness is what gives birth to art, he now convinces his friends. In his paintings, a blue world of silent loneliness arises, people rejected by society - the sick, the poor, the crippled, the elderly.
Picasso already in these years was prone to paradoxes and surprises. The years 1900-1901 are usually called "Lautren" and "Steilen" in the artist's work, thus indicating a direct connection with the art of his Parisian contemporaries. But after a trip to Paris, he finally breaks with his hobbies. The "Blue Period" in terms of attitude, problems, plasticity is already associated with the Spanish artistic tradition.
2 canvases help to understand the situation - “Absinthe Drinker” and “Date”. They stand on the very threshold of the "blue period", anticipating many of its thematic aspects and at the same time completing a whole strip of Picasso's searches, his movement towards his own truth.
It is safe to say that at the age of 15, Picasso already had an excellent command of artistic skills in the academic sense of the word. And then he is captivated by the spirit of experimentation in search of his own path in the complex intertwining of directions and currents of European art at the turn of the 20th century. In these searches, one of the remarkable features of Picasso's talent was manifested - the ability to assimilate, assimilate various trends and trends in art. In "Date" and "The Absinthe Drinker" the primary sources (the Parisian school of art) still show through. But the young Picasso is already beginning to speak in his own voice. What disturbed and tormented him now required other pictorial solutions. Past attachments have been exhausted.
With the fearlessness of a true great artist, 20-year-old Picasso turns to the "bottom" of life. He visits hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, shelters. Here he finds the heroes of his paintings - beggars, cripples, destitute, abused and thrown out by society people. The artist wanted to express not only sentimental compassion for them with his canvases. The blue world of silence, in which he immerses his characters, is not only a symbol of suffering and pain, it is also a world of proud loneliness, moral purity.
"Two Sisters" was one of the first works of this period. In "Sisters" and in general in the works of the "blue period" the author focuses on certain traditions of medieval art. He was attracted by the style of Gothic, especially Gothic plastic with its spiritualized expressiveness of forms. Picasso in those years discovers El Greco and Moralesi. In their works, he finds psychological expressiveness, the symbolism of color, sharp expression of forms, sublime spirituality of images, consonant with his then moods and searches.
"Two Sisters" is a characteristic work of the "blue period" in all respects. In the multifaceted content of the "Sisters" the theme of communication between people, the friendship of two beings as a guarantee of protection from the hardships of life, the hostility of the world again sounds.
Another typical painting by Picasso of the “blue period” is “Old Jew with a boy”. They adjoin a series of works where the beggars, the blind, the crippled act as heroes. In them, the artist seems to challenge the world of prosperous and indifferent moneybags and philistines. In his heroes, Picasso wanted to see the bearers of certain truths hidden from ordinary people, accessible only to the inner eye, the inner life of a person. No wonder most of the characters in the paintings of the "blue period" seem blind, do not have their own face. They live in their inner world, their thin "Gothic" fingers learn not the external forms of objects, but their inner secret meaning.
In Madrid, from February 1901, Picasso for the first time began to seriously study the new art, which then began its victorious march almost throughout Europe. The few months spent in Madrid turned out to be decisive for the future development of his life. This moment is marked even by a purely outward change: he used to sign his drawings with P. Ruiz Picasso, but now only the name of his mother can be seen on his works.
During this period, Picasso works fruitfully. His exhibitions are organized in Barcelona. June 24, 1901 organized the first exhibition in Paris, where he now lived. A new style is gaining momentum here, breaking the trend of limiting color to cold tones. Paris pushed Picasso to a strong revival of the palette. Increasingly, paintings appeared with bouquets of flowers and nude models. If in Madrid the artist mainly worked in blue, now next to blue and green lay pure, often contrasting colors. A new style was making its way to the surface. The artist sometimes outlined wide color surfaces in blue, purple and green. This manner was called the "period of window panes."
At the beginning of 1903, Picasso returned to Barcelona and took up landscapes, almost all of them in blue. Landscape painting has always been the artist in some neglect. Picasso is not romantic enough to see nature as a source of inexhaustible inspiration. In reality, he is only interested in a person and what directly surrounds or touches a person.
The blue color is now softened by the proximity to ocher and pale lilac colors, united by a common pink tone. The blue period has entered a new, transitional phase, the time of itinerant theater and circus people.
“I plunged into blue when I realized that Casajemas was dead,” Picasso later admitted. “The period from 1901 to 1904 in the work of Picasso is usually called the “blue” period, since most of the paintings of this time are painted in a cold blue-green scale, exacerbating the mood of fatigue and tragic poverty. What was later called the "blue" period was multiplied by images of sad scenes, paintings full of deep melancholy. At first glance, all this is incompatible with the enormous vitality of the artist himself. But remembering the self-portraits of a young man with huge sad eyes, we understand that the paintings of the "blue" period convey the emotions that owned the artist at that time. A personal tragedy sharpened his perception of the life and grief of suffering and disadvantaged people.
It is paradoxical, but true: the injustice of the life order is keenly felt not only by those who have experienced the yoke of life's hardships since childhood, or even worse - the dislike of loved ones, but also by quite prosperous people. Picasso is a prime example of this. His mother adored Pablo, and this love became an impenetrable armor for him until his death. The father, who constantly experienced financial difficulties, knew how to help his son with all his might, although he sometimes moved in a completely different direction than don Jose indicated. The beloved and prosperous young man did not become an egocentric, although the atmosphere of the decadent culture in which he was formed in Barcelona, it would seem, contributed to this. On the contrary, he felt with great force the social disorder, the huge gulf between the poor and the rich, the injustice of the structure of society, its inhumanity - in a word, everything that led to the revolutions and wars of the 20th century.
“Let's turn to one of the central works of Picasso of that time - to the painting “The Old Beggar with a Boy”, made in 1903 and now in the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin. Two sitting figures are depicted on a flat neutral background - a decrepit blind old man and a little boy. The images are given here in their sharply contrasting opposition: the face of an old man, wrinkled, as if sculpted by a powerful play of chiaroscuro, with deep cavities of blind eyes, his bony, unnaturally angular figure, the breaking lines of his legs and arms and, as opposed to him, wide-open eyes on a gentle , the softly modeled face of a boy, the smooth, flowing lines of his clothes. A boy standing on the threshold of life, and a decrepit old man, on whom death has already left its mark - these extremes are united in the picture by some tragic commonality. The boy's eyes are wide open, but they seem as unseeing as the terrible gaps in the old man's eye sockets: he is immersed in the same joyless meditation. The dull blue color further enhances the mood of sorrow and hopelessness, which is expressed in the sadly concentrated faces of people. The color here is not the color of real objects, nor is it the color of real light flooding the space of the picture. With the same dull, deadly cold shades of blue, Picasso conveys the faces of people, their clothes, and the background on which they are depicted.
The image is lifelike, but there are many conventions in it. The proportions of the old man's body are hypertrophied, an uncomfortable posture emphasizes his brokenness. Thinness is unnatural. The boy's facial features are oversimplified. “The artist does not tell us anything about who these people are, what country or era they belong to, and why they are sitting on this blue earth, huddled together like this. Nevertheless, the picture speaks volumes: in the contrasting opposition of the old man and the boy, we see both the sad, bleak past of one, and the hopeless, inevitably gloomy future of the other, and the tragic present of both of them. The very mournful face of poverty and loneliness looks at us with its sad eyes from the picture. In his works created during this period, Picasso avoids fragmentation, detailing and strives in every possible way to emphasize the main idea of the depicted. This idea remains common to the vast majority of his early writings; just like in The Old Beggar Man with the Boy, it consists in revealing the disorder, the mournful loneliness of people in the tragic world of poverty.
Acrobat and young Harlequin 1905
The "blue" and "pink" periods in the work of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso are the time of the formation of the artist's individual style. At this time, there is a departure from impressionism, the inheritance of the styles of Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and other famous artists.
"Blue" period (1901-1904)
Self-portrait. 1901
It got its name because of the general tonality of the paintings, made in blue and blue colors, united by the mood of despair and loneliness. One of the first works of this period were "Self-Portrait" (1901) and "Absinthe Drinker" (1901). Most of the heroes of Picasso's paintings are representatives of the lower strata of society, destitute, sick or vicious people. Among the later "blue" works, it is worth noting the paintings "Head of a Woman" (1902-1903), "Breakfast of a Blind Man" (1903), "Old Jew with a Boy" (1903), "Ironer" (1904). From an aesthetic point of view, it is important to move to new ways of depicting, excluding unnecessary details from the composition, and a number of other decisions that allow the viewer to focus on the emotions caused by the picture. At the same time, these works by Picasso cannot be fully considered original, because. they partially use motifs and techniques characteristic of Spanish painting. The formation of such an emotional mood of the paintings was strongly influenced by life realities. The beginning of the "blue" period is associated with the suicide of a close friend of the artist Carlos Casagemas in 1901. The proximity of death, loneliness, forced return to Barcelona in 1903 due to lack of funds influenced the depressiveness of the paintings.
"Girl on the ball" - the balance between life and death
Girl on the Ball. 1905
This painting, painted in 1905, is a characteristic work of the transitional period. The time when pain, despair and suffering in the artist's paintings are gradually disappearing, they are replaced by an interest in living human joys, embodied by circus performers and artists. The content of this work, built on contrasts (movement and static, girl and athlete, lightness and heaviness, etc.), fully corresponds to the symbolism of the transition between the bitterness of death and the joys of life.
"Pink" period (1904 - 1906)
A gradual transition to the “pink” period in his work was outlined as early as 1904, when positive changes began to take place in the artist’s life: moving to the seething center of avant-garde life - to the hostel of artists in Montmartre, falling in love with Fernande Olivier, meeting many interesting people, among whom were Matisse and Gertrude Stein. The main theme of the works of this period, made in pink, red, pearl tones, are the comedians of the Medrano circus. The paintings are distinguished by a variety of subjects, dynamics and movement. At the same time, the artist continues to develop an individual style, formed back in the "blue" period. The works “Acrobat and Young Harlequin” (1905), “Family of Comedians” (1905), “Jester” (1905), etc. belong to this time. At the end of the “pink” period, images inspired by ancient myths appear in Picasso’s paintings: “Girl with a goat "(1906)," A boy leading a horse "(1906), there is an interest in the image of the nude" Combing "(1906), A naked boy (1906).
