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A life
Pablo Picasso • Painting, 1903, 196.5×129.2 cm
Description of the artwork «A life»
Scene "A life"written in 1903 is one of the masterpieces of the "blue period" by Picasso. The artist never tried to give the world a clear picture of this painting, which is now one of the pearls of the Museum of Fine Arts in Cleveland. However, we know the tragic circumstances that became the “trigger” for the legendary “blue period”.
It falls on the years 1900 - 1904, when Picasso painted essentially monochrome paintings in blue and blue-green shades, occasionally diluting them with other colors. These gloomy works are now among the most popular among the Spaniard, although at one time he sold them with difficulty. His early years in Paris were difficult, and these paintings depicting beggars, cripples, street children and the blind seemed to reflect the painter’s own poverty and uncertainty about tomorrow.
It is assumed that the starting point for this period in Picasso was the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who shot himself in a Paris cafe on February 17, 1901. The artist himself claimed that he began to write in blue when he learned about the death of a colleague. But art critic Helena Secel notes that he was not in Paris during the suicide. This dramatic event was manifested in the works of Picasso only in the autumn of that year, when he made several portraits of the deceased.
Since the end of 1901, Picasso painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting "Life". The same mood permeates the well-known engraving.“A meager meal” (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, exhausted, sitting at an almost empty table. Blindness is a constant theme in the works of Picasso of this period, for example, such as"Breakfast of the blind" (1903, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art) and portrait"Celestine" (1903, Picasso Museum in Paris). In addition, he also often portrayed naked women and mothers with children.
A significant influence on Picasso’s paintings of the “blue period” had his visit to the Saint-Lazare Women's Prison in Paris, where the nuns also served as security guards. Picture"Two sisters" (1902, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) is an example of how an artist combined everyday reality with Christian iconography. The pose and gestures of women resemble how artists depict the Visitation of Mary, the blue color symbolizes the Virgin. This scene is related to her meeting with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.
The “blue period” was followed by “pink”, when Picasso's paintings were mostly dominated by this warm color, but the artist’s depression did not stop. It actually continued until the “Cubist period” (which followed the “pink”), and only in the subsequent period of neoclassicism did his work begin to demonstrate playfulness, which remained an outstanding feature of his work until the end of his life. Contemporaries of Picasso did not even make a distinction between the blue and pink periods, considering them one.
The constant theme of the “blue” and “pink” periods of Picasso was the hopelessness of social outsiders - prisoners, beggars, circus artists, the poor or other desperate. This topic corresponded not only to his mood, but also to the spirit of the time, the artistic and intellectual vanguard of the early 20th century.
Author: Vlad Maslov
It falls on the years 1900 - 1904, when Picasso painted essentially monochrome paintings in blue and blue-green shades, occasionally diluting them with other colors. These gloomy works are now among the most popular among the Spaniard, although at one time he sold them with difficulty. His early years in Paris were difficult, and these paintings depicting beggars, cripples, street children and the blind seemed to reflect the painter’s own poverty and uncertainty about tomorrow.
It is assumed that the starting point for this period in Picasso was the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who shot himself in a Paris cafe on February 17, 1901. The artist himself claimed that he began to write in blue when he learned about the death of a colleague. But art critic Helena Secel notes that he was not in Paris during the suicide. This dramatic event was manifested in the works of Picasso only in the autumn of that year, when he made several portraits of the deceased.
Since the end of 1901, Picasso painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting "Life". The same mood permeates the well-known engraving.“A meager meal” (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, exhausted, sitting at an almost empty table. Blindness is a constant theme in the works of Picasso of this period, for example, such as"Breakfast of the blind" (1903, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art) and portrait"Celestine" (1903, Picasso Museum in Paris). In addition, he also often portrayed naked women and mothers with children.
A significant influence on Picasso’s paintings of the “blue period” had his visit to the Saint-Lazare Women's Prison in Paris, where the nuns also served as security guards. Picture"Two sisters" (1902, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) is an example of how an artist combined everyday reality with Christian iconography. The pose and gestures of women resemble how artists depict the Visitation of Mary, the blue color symbolizes the Virgin. This scene is related to her meeting with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.
The “blue period” was followed by “pink”, when Picasso's paintings were mostly dominated by this warm color, but the artist’s depression did not stop. It actually continued until the “Cubist period” (which followed the “pink”), and only in the subsequent period of neoclassicism did his work begin to demonstrate playfulness, which remained an outstanding feature of his work until the end of his life. Contemporaries of Picasso did not even make a distinction between the blue and pink periods, considering them one.
The constant theme of the “blue” and “pink” periods of Picasso was the hopelessness of social outsiders - prisoners, beggars, circus artists, the poor or other desperate. This topic corresponded not only to his mood, but also to the spirit of the time, the artistic and intellectual vanguard of the early 20th century.
Author: Vlad Maslov
