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Picasso Sad Times
By peace | October 4, 2010
Stage Curtain created for Parade
The above picture shows a colour print of the stage curtain that Picasso had created for Parade. Parade was a ballet about a circus sideshow. He made the curtain and print around 1917.
Picasso and Braque used stencils and printed words in their paintings. They also began pasting things onto their pictures. If they wanted a newspaper to be shown, instead of painting it, they stuck on a real piece of newspaper. That was how collage began. Collage means ‘to stick’. One of Pablo’s first collages was called Still Life with Chair Caning.
Braque and Picasso went on, in their playful way, sticking other things onto their paintings — pieces of cloth, sandpaper, wallpaper, even trash! But their experiment with art were interrupted by world events. World War I broke out in Europe in 1914. Great Britain, France, the United States, and their friends, who were on one side, fought Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their friends, who were on the other side. Picasso saw many of his fellow artists, such as Braque, join the fighting. Braque was drafted into the French army. Pablo was not a French citizen. He did not have to join the army. He stayed in Paris while many of his friends went off to fight.
France was fighting against Germany. Because Picasso’s friend, the gallery owner Kahnweiler, was German, he was forced to leave France. The gallery was closed by the French authorities. All of Picasso’s work there was confiscated.
Picasso chose not to fight, staying in Paris for most of the war. At this time, Eva Humbert became sick. Doctors discovered that she had tuberculosis, an illness that affects the lungs. In 1915, Humbert died. Picasso did not produce as much art as usual because he was so sad. Again his sadness showed in his paintings. He had worked on one painting while Eva was sick, Harlequin, and finished it after she died. It shows a clownlike artist in front of an easel holding an unfinished painting. The background is black. It was a bleak time in Europe and in Picasso’s personal life. Then around 1916, he met Jean Cocteau, a French poet and playwright. A playwright is a person who writes stories that are acted onstage. He introduced Picasso to a music composer. The two of them convinced Picasso to design a set and costumes for a ballet to be performed in Rome. It was about a circus and was called Parade. Cocteau talked Picasso into creating the scenery, or painted settings, and costumes for Parade. Picasso had never even seen a ballet before. The ballet was presented in Paris in May 1917. People who saw it did not like it. The ballet was too modern and shocked them.
Pablo Picasso Links
The Artistic Genius
First Communion
Science and Charity
Blue Paintings
PInk Paintings
Picasso’s Shocking Paintings (Cubism)
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October 8th, 2010 at 10:19 am
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