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960376

Dora Marr by Picasso Giclee on Canvas S/N

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:350.00 USD Estimated At:500.00 - 600.00 USD
Dora Marr by Picasso Giclee on Canvas S/N
Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso was born in South Spain in Malaga. Malaga is a scenic city on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. His father, Don José Ruiz Blasco and mother, Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez lived modestly. His father was a painter and naturally, Pablo was exposed to art and the creation of it, very early on in life. The first ten years of Pablo's life was spent in Málaga. The family was poor, and when two other children were born Lola (Dolorès) in 1884 and Concepción (Conchita) in 1887 it put pressure on Don to find a higher paying position. When Don José was offered a better-paid job, he accepted it immediately, and the Picassos moved to the provincial capital of La Corua, Galicia and and he studied art with his father at the Fine Arts at La Corua. In 1900 he moved to Barcelona. At that time Barcelona was home to many intellectuals and artists. Picasso headed into what now is referred to as the "blue period" (1901-1904), marked by the blue tonalities in his paintings as he shuffled back and forth from Paris to Barcelona. In 1905 Picasso moved to Paris and met George Braque. His style also took on a new look. Pinks and Grays were some recognizable color scheme of this period now known as the "rose period". In 1907 Picasso painted "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon". This is considered to be one his most important works not only of his life but in 20th century art. In 1909 just before his introduction to the U.S. Pablo began to develop his cubism style in several of his works. Picasso had his first exhibition in the U.S. at Photo - Section Gallery in New York (1911). Soon after this Picasso began to work in college and in 1914 he went to Rome to work as a designer. He worked with Sergey Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. In 1915 Picasso met his wife, Olga, who was then a dancer. Olga Koklova became the subject of several of his paintings. The next 10 years of his life was spent designing theater sets and painting in Cubism, Classical, and Surrealism. From 1929 to 1931 he worked on a large quantity of graphic illustrations and he pioneered wrought iron sculpture with Julio Gonzalez, a good friend of his. In 1935 his daughter Maria Therese was borne. She later became the model for one of my all time favorite paintings "Girl Before the Mirror". In this painting a girl sees herself imperfectly and through Picassos use of color and his use of the reflected image, one can gain a look into the emotion of the "Girl Before the Mirror." If you have not sat and looked at this painting, you might want to consider doing so.a true masterpiece. In 1937 the world was becoming entangled by Nazi attacks. Picasso responded with his great anti-war painting "Guernica," a very powerful and disturbing portrayal of man. Death became a major subject in most of his work from 1939 to 1945. Francois Gilot became Picasso's liason during the 1940's. She borne him two children and she also appeared in many of his works from that time period. Jacqueline Roque, whom he met in 1953 and married in 1961 was his last companions to be portrayed in his art. Most of his time in the 50's was spent in southern France. He unveiled "Head of a Woman" for Chicago 's Civic Center in 1967. Towards the end of his life Picasso created 347 engravings with themes of the circus, bullfights, and love. He died April 8th in 1973. Picasso was one of the few artists to be appreciated and celebrated during his lifetime. He loved life and celebrated the beauty of it and he made a good living doing what he loved. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is one of the most important works in the genesis of modern art. The painting depicts five naked prostitutes in a brothel; two of them push aside curtains around the space where the other women strike seductive and erotic poses-but their figures are composed of flat, splintered planes rather than rounded volumes, their eyes are lopsided or staring or asymmetrical, and the two women at the right have threatening masks for heads. The space, too, which should recede, comes forward in jagged shards, like broken glass. In the still life at the bottom, a piece of melon slices the air like a scythe. The faces of the figures at the right are influenced by African masks, which Picasso assumed had functioned as magical protectors against dangerous spirits: this work, he said later, was his "first exorcism painting." A specific danger he had in mind was life-threatening sexual disease, a source of considerable anxiety in Paris at the time; earlier sketches for the painting more clearly link sexual pleasure to mortality. In its brutal treatment of the body and its clashes of color and style (other sources for this work include ancient Iberian statuary and the work of Paul Cézanne), Les Demoiselles d'Avignon marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective. With Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso offends the Paris art scene in 1907. Showing his eight-foot-square canvas to a group of painters, patrons, and art critics at his studio, Picasso meets with almost unanimous shock, distaste, and outrage. The painter Matisse is angered by the work, which he considers a hoax, an attempt to paint the fourth dimension. "It was the ugliness of the faces that froze with horror the half-converted," the critic Salmon writes later. The painter Derain comments wryly, "One day we shall find Pablo has hanged himself behind his great canvas." In the months leading up to the painting's creation, Picasso struggles with the subject -- five women in a brothel. He creates more than 100 sketches and preliminary paintings, wrestling with the problem of depicting three-dimensional space in a two -dimensional picture plane. The original composition includes two men -- a patron surrounded by the women, and a medical student holding a skull, perhaps symbolizing that "the wages of sin are death." In the final composition, the patron is gone and the medical student -- who has been called a stand-in for the painter himself -- has become a fifth woman with a primitive mask, holding back the crimson curtain to reveal her "sisters." The painting is described as a battleground, with the remains of the battle left on the canvas. The Iberian women in the center of the canvas clash with the hideously masked creatures standing and squatting on the right. In creating Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Picasso turns his back on middle-class society and the traditional values of the time, opting for the sexual freedom depicted in a brothel. He also rejects popular current movements in painting by choosing line drawing rather than the color- and light-defined forms of Impressionism and the Fauves. The painter's private demons take shape in the figures on the canvas. Picasso later calls Les Demoiselles d'Avignon "my first exorcism painting." He likens the act of painting to that of creating fetishes, or weapons: "If we give spirits a form, we become independent." The originality of Picasso's vision and execution in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon help plant the seeds for cubism, the widely acclaimed and revolutionary art movement that he and painter Georges Braque develop in years to come. After its initial showing, the painting remains largely unseen for 39 years. It is shown at the Galerie d'Antin in Paris in 1916, then lies rolled up in Picasso's studio until it is bought in the early 1920s by Jacques Doucet, sight unseen. It is reproduced in the publication La Revolution Surrealiste in 1925, but remains relatively unknown until 1937, when it is shown at the Petit Palais in Paris. The Museum of Modern Art in New York buys it soon afterwards, and in later years it becomes a prized part of the collection.
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