The story of art in the twentieth century is the story of Picasso's
own creative journey. It is barely an exaggeration to say that
Picasso invented modern art, and it was Picasso's peculiar fate
that the full extent of his genius be recognised in his own lifetime
#
At his death in
1973, Picasso's
fortune was
estimated at
5000 million
francs (then
$101,280,500
million). The
settlement of the
will took several
years, and in
1976 it was
agreed in court
that the six heirs
should draw lots
for their share of
the estate
@
If Picasso had
never wrought a
revolution in
western art, he
would still be
recognised as a
great painter. His
early 'naturalistic'
works, which
include the
beautiful studies
of the human
form and face of
his so-called Blue
Period, are among
the first and
finest paintings of
the twentieth
century
#
Nothing could
have prepared
critics and friends
for the assault
Pablo Picasso
launched on the
conventions of
Western painting.
The images he
now produced
showed the
influence of
'primitive' and
African sculpture,
but amounted to
the most crucial
departure in
western art since
the discovery of
perspective
#
Cubism, Picasso's
next innovation,
grew out of the
contention that
everything in
nature is made
up of cylinders,
cones and
spheres. Picasso
tackled the
problem of
depicting three-
dimensional
objects on a flat
surface, and such
paintings
depicted natural
objects
fragmented, so
that they could
be seen from
different angles
#
Picasso's cubist
experiments soon
extended into
abstractionism,
where the subject
of the painting
was barely
perceptible
beneath
geometric blocks
of bright colour.
But all this time
Picasso continued
to produce
'realistic'
paintings,
insisting that he
was not bound by
any of the styles
he had worked in
#
In the Twenties
Picasso was
working in
different styles
and media, some
of which were
part-way
between painting
and sculpture.
Picasso was also
drawn to the
surrealist
movement, then
much in fashion,
where familiar
objects were
rendered strange
and
unrecognisable
#
Picasso often
used the theme of
the Minotaur. The
idea of the
mythological
man-bull locked
away in a dark,
inescapable
labyrinth seems
to have touched
some deep chord
within him, and
also expressed
itself in a
fascination with
bullfights. These
preoccupations
were worked out
in the 1935
etching
"Minotauromachy"
#
Picasso was
fascinated by
animals from an
early age, and
they became an
important motif
in his work. In
his middle years,
as the tally of
mistresses and
lovers grew ever
longer, he moved
on to
symbolically
masculine
representations
of cockerels, goats
and bulls
#
Picasso
responded to
those who
protested about
the "ugliness" of
the faces by
saying "Art is not
the application of
a canon of
beauty, but what
the instinct and
the brain can
conceive beyond
any canon. When
we love a woman
we don't start
measuring her
limbs. We love
with our desires."
#
Picasso's
deceptively
straightforward
brush-and-ink
sketches were in
a sense no
different from
the rest of his
vast output. They
share with the
shimmering
cubist
abstractions a
precise and
singular aim: to
show the essence
of the subject,
and convey a
truth about the
world
#
In old age Picasso continued to diversify, producing not just paintings and drawings, but ceramics, sculptures, linocuts and etchings. In 1970, when he was 89, an exhibition of recent work in France contained 167 paintings and 45 drawings
@
Like all pioneers,
especially in the
arts, Picasso was
criticised by
traditionalists for
being too obscure
and too shallow.
Some critics of
the first major
Cubist exhibition
felt that Picasso's
abstracts were a
hollow sham,
expressing
nothing deeper
than a fear that
photography
would make
all painters
redundant
#
The tortured-
looking distorted
figures of cubism
seemed made
for Guernica,
Picasso's epic
statement on
war. Now the
critics saw the
point, and the
painting was
instantly greeted
as a masterpiece
#
Picasso stayed in Paris during the war years. His studio was
searched by the Gestapo because he was a known communist. And his
work was denounced as degenerate by the Nazi occupiers
