Pablo Picasso Is One of the Greatest Artists of the 20th Century

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Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, on October 25, 1881(Fiero 23). He became one of the most and greatest influential artists in the 20th century. Regardless of being a Spanish expatriate painter, printmaker, sculptor, stage designer and ceramicist, he was best known for using Cubist style. Painting of the German bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica amid the Spanish Civil War is among his most popular works. He was born into a middle-class family, as a result Picasso took after his hardworking father, who was a painter as well a professor of art. At an age of 7 years, he had formal art lessons from his loving father. Picasso threw himself into the art which led his school grades to go down. When he was aged 16, his family sent him to Madrid’s Royal Academy of Art for studies. Picasso moved to Paris in the year 1990, although it was hard for him to make his living. In 1991, a police questioned him for stealing the Mona Lisa. Picasso became the most famous artist due to his anti-war views. Furthermore, his painting Guernica represented the horror of the war. He tried to publicly opposed America’s participation in the Korean War.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was the first Picasso’s masterpiece. This painting involves five naked women with figures made of flat, faces inspired by the Iberian sculpture, splintered planes and African masks. The figures inhabit and the compressed space appears to move forward in jagged shards. Moreover, there is a fiercely pointed slice of a melon at the bottom of the fruit composition teeters on the impossibly upturned tabletop. In this painting, he totally differentiated himself from the traditional European paintings by adapting primitivism and abandonment of the perspectives in order to favor use of flats and the two dimensional picture planes (Fiero 77).

Figure 1 les Demoiselles d’Avignon
This painting was mainly subjected to reveal the emotions of the society. It was shocking even to his closest artist friends simply because of its execution and content. The aim of the nude women was not only itself unusual, but Picasso painted the women as prostitutes in an aggressively sexual postures. His studies of tribunal art and Iberian are mostly evidenced in the faces of the three women, which are condensed as mask-like, to prove that their sexuality was not just hostile, but also primitive. Moreover, Picasso continued with his spatial ways through abandoning the Renaissance illusion of the 3-dimensionality, and instead presented a radical flattened picture plane that was broken up into a geometric shard. He sometimes borrowed techniques from Paul Cezanne’s brushwork (Lowery, Linda, and Janice 222). For example, he painted the left leg of the woman in such that when seen from different points of view concurrently, it would be difficult to distinguish that leg from the negative space around it. This made it appear as if the two legs were both in the foreground. This painting was believed to be immoral after it was finally exhibited in the public in 1916.
When his painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avigninon” appeared to the society, everybody thought the art world had collapsed. Individuals had abandoned all the known forms and representations. Picasso’s painting was referred to as the most innovative painting in the modern art history. Notably, with the new methods being applied in the painting industry, he suddenly found freedom to express his work away from the classical French and current influences. In addition, Picasso was able to introduce his own path. He developed formal ideas during that time which led to Cubist period.
Another aspect that differentiated Picasso’s work from the other artists was his personal feeling to the rest of the world. He was not afraid to extend the boundaries of the human mind. Arguably, in 1937 he created the most famous Guernica following the Nazi Germany’s bombing in Guernica. His work is considered to be the most powerful anti-war testimonial of the modern art. Picasso did this work in order to support the motion of ending war and as a condemnation on the fascism in general. He chooses not to symbolize horror of the Guernica in romantic or realistic terms (Chipp, Herschel B., and Pablo Picasso 166).

Figure 2 Guernica
This painting reveals cataclysms of War, the anguish as well as the destruction it cause upon individuals, especially innocent civilians. It has attained several reputations over the years and as a result has been one of the everlasting reminders of devastation of War. Additionally, it is becoming an anti-war icon. It was exhibited in the whole world during a limited tour, thus becoming quite famous. This painting helped Spanish Civil War to come into an end. The interpretations of the Guernica symbol changes extensively and contradict from one person to another. In most cases, the bearing and form of the painting convey a certain protest. Picasso used white, grey and black paint to create a sense of sorrowful environment and convey the suffering and disorders the Native American’s were passing through during the War. During the bombing there was crumbling walls and flaming structures and Picasso used them to portray the devastation of the Guernica (McNeese, Tim and Pablo 105). They also reveal the difficult time led by the war. He even tried to make use of newspaper print; the use of newspaper print in the backdrop of the painting shows how Picasso realized the bombing. However, the light bulb used in the painting symbolizes the sun. As a result, he managed to show broken sword near the painting to portray the defeat of the community by their conquerors. Picasso wanted to reveal his identity as well as his power as an artist when he was confronted with intolerable violence and political authority by making Guernica. Instead of the Guernica being simply a political work of art, it is viewed as Picasso’s message on what art rule the self-assertion that liberates all the humanity and shields each individual from the overpowering forces such as, war, political crime and death.
In summation, Picasso used Cubism as the main style of art. Cubism played a vital role in the establishment and development of the western world. He used this style to synthesis or emphasizes the combination of forms in the picture. Basically, color remains to an essential aspect in the objects’ shapes simply because they become more decorative and larger. However, non-painted objects like tobacco wrappers and newspapers are frequently pasted after being combined with painted areas in the canvas. Picasso explained on how to incorporate different extraneous materials in a canvas in his novel “technique of collage” (McNeese, Tim and Pablo Picasso 133) He emphasized the differences that exist in textures. With the use of color, geometrical figures, shape as well as his unique to portray images, Picasso managed to change the directions of the art for the coming generations.

Work cited

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Chipp, Herschel B., and Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s Guernica: history, transformations, meanings. University of California Press, 1988.
Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in the Humanities: Special Edition for Valencia College. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2013. Print
Lowery, Linda, and Janice L. Porter. Pablo Picasso. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 2000. Print.
McNeese, Tim, and Pablo Picasso. Pablo Picasso. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2006. Internet resource.