Pablo Picasso - Blue Period
(1881-1973)
 

Shortly after moving to Paris from Barcelona, Picasso began to produce works that were suffused in blue. This particular pigment is effective in conveying a sombre tone. The psychological trigger for these depressing paintings was the suicide of Picasso's friend Casagemas. The Blue Period work is quite sentimental, but we must keep in mind that Picasso was still in his late teens, away from home for the first time, and living in very poor conditions.

 

Pablo Picasso
Le Gourmet, 1901
Chester Dale Collection
1963.10.52

Woman and Child by the Sea (1902)
[Maternity by the Sea]

Blue Nude, 1902
Pablo (Ruiz y) Picasso

Le Repas Frugal, 1904
Made by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 - 1973)
Spanish
Etching; Plate: 18-3/16 x 14-13/16 in. (45.5 x 37 cm); Sheet: 25 11/16 x 19 11/16 in. (64.2 x 49.2 cm)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1923 (23.31.1)



La Vie (1903)
Pablo Picasso,
Oil on canvas,
Height: 196.5 cm.


This masterpiece is among the largest and most complex paintings from Picasso's Blue Period, dating from 1901 to 1904. Painted in Barcelona, La Vie remains one of the key works in the prodigious output of paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and pottery of this dominant visual artist of the twentieth century.

La Vie is set in an artist's studio, containing vague suggestions of cloistered architecture. A nude woman clings to the male figure, dressed only in a white loincloth, who points toward the heavily draped woman holding a sleeping baby. Between these groups are two canvases, stacked one on top of the other, in the beginning stages of development and only outlined. In the upper one, two clinging nudes look out hopelessly; in the other, the figure rests its head on drawn-up knees. Picasso made four preparatory sketches for this painting, changing the figures in the composition at least twice. The cloaked female figure was initially a bearded male. The male figure, which began as a self-portrait, ended as a portrait of Picasso's late friend Carlos Casagemas, who had committed suicide after being cruelly rejected by a lover.

L'Absinthe. 1901. Charcoal, pastel, gouache on paper. Collection of  Otto Krebs, Holzdorf. Now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Pablo Picasso
The Tragedy, 1903
Chester Dale Collection
1963.10.196

The Old Guitarist. 1903. Oil on panel. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA


Old Beggar with a Boy. 1903. Oil on canvas. The Pushkin Museum of Fine


L'ascete. 1903. Oil on canvas. Barnes Foundation, Lincoln University, Merion, PA, USA


Woman with a Crow. 1904. Charcoal, pastel and water-color on paper. Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, USA


The Catalan Sculptor Manolo (Manuel Hugué). 1904. Ink and watercolor on paper.