"Figures on the Beach" (1931)
The work of Pablo Picasso currently causes much controversy. The ambiguity of the genius's methods is too great. His works transformed 20th-century art, which acquired widespread symbolism, reflecting the unity of triumph and tragedy, vitality and at the same time human helplessness before fate. The power of creativity lies in contradictions and paradoxes. Absorbing the experience of past generations, each work is filled with expression, exposes human vices, and celebrates the triumph of life and all-conquering love.
Analyzing the genius's work, researchers point out that the creator is not only susceptible to external changes (to problems in creativity, in human development), but also to his internal ones. Step by step, from work to work, he reveals to the world his own moods, dilemmas, and life's vicissitudes.
Picasso's creative path is divided into several periods: 'Blue', 'Rose', Cubism, Classical period, Surrealism, post-war period, and the final years.
1. The 'Blue' period of creativity is marked by Picasso's second trip to Paris (the first occurred during his studies in Madrid) and represents a completely different manner of depicting reality than the one in which he worked while studying at the school of artists. Now tragedy and sadness come to the fore, which, according to the creator, are capable of giving birth to art. Now his canvases are filled with silent loneliness, rejected 'lower classes' of society – cripples, old people, beggars. Already in these paintings, paradoxes and surprises began to appear. During this period, such canvases as 'The Absinthe Drinker', 'Two Sisters' ('The Meeting'), 'Old Beggar with a Boy' were revealed to the world.
2. The 'Rose' period. Picasso settles in Paris. Now the blueness of his previous canvases is diluted with pink shades and gradually dominates. The deep meaning of the changes lies, of course, not in textural transformations, but in thematic ones. Now a previously unknown world appears on the canvases – comedic, artistic, circus. During this period, the artist's muse-inspirer becomes Fernande Olivier, a famous French model. They settle in the citadel of Parisian artists – Bateau-Lavoir, where on the brink of poverty, in a creative union, they give birth to canvases with harlequins, circus performers, clowns. All the characters are shown offstage, in everyday life, but at the same time they are distinguished from others by the costumes of the characters they portray and by their sad-anxious gazes ('Family of Comedians', 'Boy with a Horse', 'Girl on a Ball', 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon').
3. Cubism. The master's main task becomes to show the viewer unconventional ways of perceiving reality, to bring him to a completely different level of awareness of the external, visible world. ('Three Women', 'Can and Bowls', 'Violin').
4. Classical period. It is marked by the artist's acquaintance with Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova. In his work, this manifested itself in the appearance of a gallery of female Slavic images, among which Olga stands out. Subsequently, the boy named Paul, born from the union of lovers, would provide fertile ground for depicting the mysterious world of childhood ('Olga Reading', 'Portrait of Olga' and others).
5. The Surrealism period reflects the world of the unconscious, the dreamlike. During this time, Picasso created 'Bather Opening a Cabin', 'Woman with a Flower', as well as a number of famous sculptural works in which female faces appear in unconventional guises.
6. In the post-war period, Picasso becomes interested in bucolic, fairy-tale themes. He depicts fauns, centaurs, nude maidens, and in the last years of his life turns to female portraits. This period left us such works as 'Woman-Flower', 'Joy of Life', 'Dove of Peace', 'Girls on the Bank of the Seine. After Courbet'.
Pablo Picasso's works are still successful among auctioneers and art lovers, especially little-known ones. A colossal number of museums around the world present various works of the master. The most famous are exhibited at the Rosengart Gallery and the Art Gallery of Switzerland, Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Albright-Knox Gallery (USA), the Picasso Museums, the Queen Sofia Arts Center (Spain), the Picasso Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Center (France), the Museum of Fine Arts, the Tate Gallery, the Penrose Collection, Christie's (England), the State Hermitage (St. Petersburg), the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow).