Critical Analysis of Pablo Picasso's Artworks by Periods

Throughout Picasso’s lifetime, he created many self-portraits, all of which, using a range of styles. I will be looking at some of his iconic self-portraits. Throughout I will be thinking about, why and how his depiction of himself over the years may have changed and what may have influenced him. The pieces I will look at range from age 15 to 90, showing a true representation of his artistic growth throughout.

I thought this would be interesting to research as my personal investigation is based around the theme of distortion. In my investigation I am looking particularly at how people can mask real emotions using facial expressions or personality traits, and I am therefore trying to express multiple emotions in one image. I think a lot Picasso’s work is a great example of this as he, especially in his later years, worked off the idea that in one person there could be both good and evil or beauty and ugliness and so on, and succeeded to show both sides through his art.

Early work (1886-1900):

Picasso was exposed to art from an early age due to his father being an art professor. Picasso showed skill in art from a young age and received formal training from father, focusing on drawings and oil paintings. His training required disciplined copying of masters and drawing the human body from plaster casts or live models. This focus method of teaching explains the realistic tone of his earlier work.

This is represented in this self-portrait as is created using fine details and includes This detailed image showcases the skills he would have been strictly taught during his education. The colours used in this painting are also realistic, with pink and yellow undertones in the skin and the dark browns and greys for the clothing.

At the age of 16, he was sent to one of the best art schools in Madrid. However, soon after enrollment he stopped going to classes due a dislike for the formal instructions and teaching methods. Instead of attending lessons, he found himself growing admiration for the works of El Greco, especially interested in elements such as arresting colors, mystical visages and elongated limbs. This is represented later on in his work during his blue period.

The Blue Period (1901-1904):

On February 17th Picasso returned to Madrid to leant about the suicide of his dear friend Casagemas, who had shot himself in a Paris Café. Picasso and Casagemas had spent many years together and travelled to many countries such as Spain and Malaga. Picasso later stated, “i started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas’s death.” Following the death of his friend, Picasso worked in Casagemas’s studio and wrote about the night life in Paris, which would soon relate to his work in the blue period. Soon after, he started work on his famous ‘Blue Period’. His blue period mainly consisted of images of societies outcasts, with many paintings of beggars, drunks and prostitutes.

At the time this self-portrait was created, Picasso was just 20 years old, despite looking much older in the piece. He uses what became a rather distinct style of eyebrows, painted with minimal detail and simply shaping, we continue to see these simple eyebrows throughout Picasso's career and may represent part of his journey towards cubism. In the painting he is conveyed to perhaps look ill or exhausted, this is represented with the mixture of his pale face and the sharp contours below his cheek bones and around his eyes, making him seem withered. Throughout all of the portraits I am looking at for my research, this is the only one which shows Picaso with a beard and moustache, this thin and unkept beard may be a sign of a lack of care for himself throughout a stage of depression and grief. The high collar and buttons up coat highlight the idea that Picasso may have isolated himself from the rest of society through this time, and the loneliness he may have felt.

Towards the end of the Blue Period, one of Picasso’s mistresses, Madeline, became pregnant with what would have been his first child but soon had an abortion in 1904. This seemed to have a great impact on Picasso as around this time he began creating images of mother and babies. When such drawings resurfaced in 1968, Picasso stated that he ‘would’ve had a 64-year-old child by that time’.

At the time, none of the Blue Period were sold. Many said that the painting s were too depressing and sad and didn’t want pieces of art consisting of prostitutes and beggars displayed in their homes.

The Rose Period (1904-1907):

While the Blue Period expressed his sorrows, the Rose Period saw Picasso's work regain its romantic quality through the use of warm and orange tones. In 1904, Picasso met his ‘first great love’ Fernande Olivier, a French artist and model who soon became his mistress. It has been said that their happy relationship was the reason for the change in Picasso’s style.

This piece is significantly more abstract than his previous portraits. Although less traditional, with the use of bright oranges and greens, this piece still manages to radiate energy and feeling of life, much more than the previous portrait.

Throughout this period, Picasso’s paintings became full of actors, acrobats and athletes and is said that the Circe Madrano had a great influence on him. Another influence of the Rose Period was fellow artist Henri Matisse, who had been regarded as the ‘father of modern art’. Not exactly friends, the two didn’t actually like each other's art at first and throughout their careers found great spirit in challenging and stimulating each other to do better. It is also obvious to see that perhaps Matisse's use of bright colours inspired Picasso to do so as well.

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Throughout his Rose Period, Picasso developed the stylistic means that would go on to become part of the historical Picasso style. During this time, he experimented with a style that left his subject anonymous, resulting in an unsolved jigsaw of a person, instead of the person itself. This method of characterization instead of direct portrayal certainly led him in the direction of abstract art. After this period Picasso would occasionally create figurative art, but never again would it be his main style.

The African Period (1907-1909):

As a product of the French colonialisation and annexation of several sub-Saharan (African) states, notably the kingdom of Dahomey. Traditional African artwork flooded museums around Europe, consequently making artifacts such as masks, tools and ornaments became vastly popular among the bourgeoisie. In 1907, Picasso made a trip to the Trocadéro Museum of Ethnology, he soon found himself fascinated by the African art and later said that he ‘saw the connection between artwork and magic as a form of spirituality.’

From this point onwards, Picasso art would no longer depict realistic scenes from an object point of view, instead would reveal the innate links that humanity had to its primitive level of nature. This was a novel approach at the time, due to few other artists in Europe working from anonymous influences. However, this was a method in which had been briefly built on by earlier European artists such as Monet and other contemporary European avant-guard artists. It is said that he aimed to depict power, spirit and emotion through art instead of simply recreating reality.

During this period, his artwork became largely focused on creating abstract portraits of female nudes, particularly in groups. Most with distorted heads and more ambiguous humanoid figures. Towards the end of this period, he combined this style with mundane scenes of fruit or panoramic views of factories, fusing his African influences and Cubism to create eye catching a colourful landscape.

This portrait consists of what would become Picassos classic techniques when creating art. With harsh black lines and bright warm colours, combined with twisted depiction of human form as seen with the enlargement of eyes and nose in this particular piece.

Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919):

Throughout the years of 1909 and 1912, Picasso and fellow artist worked closely together to develop what would be known as analytical cubism. Early cubist painting was misunderstood by critics and viewers due to the thought that it was merely geometric art. The painters however, felt as though they were presented a new kind of reality that broke away from renaissance tradition. With the use of perspective and illusion, they presented multiple views of an object on the same canvas to convey more information.

From an early age, Picasso extremely aware to the co-existence of good and evil and resisted traditional ideals of beauty and ugliness, believing that one can be found in the other. In Greek and Roman Mythology, the process of transformation fascinated him. For example, he found himself infatuated with stories of the minotaur, a creature half man and half beast. This was evident in his work as he created numerous images of the minotaur through the years, starting in 1928 with The Minotaur.

His romantic life also played a part in Picasso’s cubist journey. In 1935 Picasso met French photographer, painter and poet, Dora Maar. She became his muse and gave birth to his daughter in 1935, despite Picassos long term relationship with Olga having not yet ended. Picasso never completely dissociated himself after moving to another lover. Often this form of guilt was highlighted through is art, in which an image of one woman may transform into two. For example, in a private sketchbook one of Picasso’s portraits revealed his double life, as pictured of his then secret mistress evolved into horrific images of a screaming Olga.

This portrait Is very in line with the rest of his work from this period. With harsh striking lines and distorted body parts, such as the arm becoming separated from the body and slightly enlarged and the classic view of both eyes despite the image being from a side profile. However, this work piece does have a slightly less finished look due to the lack of colours that were featured so heavily through these years in his art, I still feel as though it has been though out and was not rushed or simply a quick sketch.

Later works to final years (1949-1973):

In the last 4 years of his life, Picasso made more art than in any other period of his life and it is though that his last life instinct was to paint. In his old age he allowed himself a kind of freedom that leading towards the end of his life, he did not try to justify. In many of the self-portraits from this time were shown to have large and widely opened eyes as though he was staring petrified at something. It is believed that this represents his fear of death and is supported by the fact that one of his most well-known self-portraits from 1972 (the year before he died) was named ‘Self Portrait Facing Death’. During these years, he became almost compulsively creative, as if trying to paint his way out of death, or to simply make the most out of the time he had left. He painted with such speed that he had had once before in Barcelona as a teenager.

Compared to the previous portraits and art Picasso had produced, the work he created in his final years seemed to have infantile feeling to it. For example, in the first portrait shown from 1972, he has used colours such as; pale blue, pink, beiges and pure colours directly from the tin, this shows the idea that Picasso abandoned his sense of colour completely. By simplifying his forms and using repetition as a creative device, he would create series inspired by one compositional idea or theme. Large quantities of his work in this period including deformed features such as; oddly sized and shaped eyes and hands, noses squashed flat, and generally caricatured features.

The final portrait shown is interesting to me as it differs to much is style and technique to many of his other pieces, however, still holds that abstract Picasso style. It represents Picasso and how he saw himself in his old age, with shoulders that look week and frail and visual idea of him turning to stone with old age, perhaps representing the fact that at 90 years old, his mobility would have slowed down, he may have felt trapped inside his less able body. The fact that he drew himself as a kind of stone figure after creating hundreds of pieces of work in his final years, may be reflecting the fact that he knew that his name and work would last forever, much like stone.