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Picasso: The Artist's Studio

Who Was Picasso?


Pablo, Picasso<BR><I>La Vie (Life)</I>, 1903 <BR>Oil on canvas <BR>The Cleveland Museum of Art. Gift of the Hanna Fund 1945.24 <BR>[Cat. no. 5]
Pablo, Picasso
La Vie (Life), 1903
Oil on canvas
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Gift of the Hanna Fund 1945.24
[Cat. no. 5]
©2001 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Blue and Rose Periods

In the fall of 1900 Picasso traveled to Paris, a crucial experience that broadened his exposure to avant-garde art. For the next four years he lived an unsettled life, moving frequently between Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid. Critics and collectors responded favorably to his early exhibitions in Barcelona and Paris, including his 1901 solo show at the Vollard gallery. In late 1901, following the suicide of his companion, Carles Casagemas, Picasso abandoned his eclectic experiments with various Post-Impressionist styles and launched into his Blue Period of 1901-1904. Now concentrating on themes of human misery and desolation, Picasso developed his first completely personal style of withdrawn, introspective figures rendered with severely simplified forms and predominately cold colors. Most former patrons disliked these profoundly depressing paintings of beggars, cripples, abandoned mothers, and other social outcasts. Reduced to wretched poverty himself, Picasso eventually returned to living with his parents in Barcelona, where he produced La Vie (1903), a resumé of Blue Period themes.

In 1904 Picasso returned to Paris and joined a circle of French avant-garde artists and poets living in Montmartre. Perhaps reflecting a brightening of his mood and social circumstances, he abandoned the Blue Period’s emphasis on human misery and developed a new style critics later labelled the Pink or Rose Period (1904-1906). The new manner featured acrobats and circus performers, erotic love scenes, and more cheerful depictions of family life. Warm pinks and ochres replaced the predominately cold colors of the Blue Period. Buoyant shapes and delicate lines supplanted the heavy, severe forms of previous years. A classicizing trend also emerged during the final two years of the Rose Period. Historians often associate the lively, energetic style of this period with Picasso’s love affair with Fernande Olivier, his first serious, long-term romantic engagement.

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