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Pablo Picasso (1891 - 1973)

    Picasso is regarded as the founder of the Cubist movement.  Cubism involves taking objects (including persons) and analyzing then painting them in terms of their parts.  The resultant art has a geometrical aspect, even appearing sculptural.  In a later version called synthetic cubism, the paintings were enhanced by attaching scraps of wallpaper, wrapping paper, photos, drawings, other art, etc.  That technique is generally seen as the origin of the collage.

    Picasso's painting Les Damoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas, is considered the seminal cubist work of art.

    His 1921 collage, The Three Musicians, is an example of synthetic cubism.   

Les Damoiselles d'Avignon.  1907,

7" 8" X 8', oil on canvas

The Three Musicians, 1921

6"7" X 7"4", oil on canvas

   The cubist influence can be seen in what many critics consider Picasso's masterpiece, the huge (11' X 26'), mural-like oil on canvas, Guernica, painted in 1937 as a protest of the Spanish Civil War, particularly as the War affects innocent non-combatants.  The painting remains an icon of anti-war protesters worldwide. 

  Picasso's later work included sculptures.  The best known of those is the 1967 sculpture that has become a landmark in downtown Chicago.  It has an element of abstraction in that the identity of form ("what it is a statue of?") is left to the eye and mind of the viewer.  Is it a bird, a horse, a woman, just a shape or something else?  That ambiguity is the essence of the work's popularity with Chicagoans.