The most prolific and celebrated artist of his generation, Picasso was a driving force of modern and contemporary art. The impact of his influence is still felt today: his myriad styles and techniques continue to inspire artists – and set records at auction. Here, we introduce the icon and the key periods of his career before delving into his work and offering some advice for collectors.
1. Spanish Genius
Born in 1881, Pablo Ruiz Picasso studied in Barcelona and Madrid before visiting Paris for the first time in 1900. This trip marked the beginning of his love affair with France, where he spent most of his adult life. In a career spanning 80 years, Picasso blazed a trail through the 20th century as he experimented with a multitude of styles and media. By his death in 1973, he was credited with co-founding Cubism, pioneering constructed sculpture, and elevating the status of collage to fine art.
Picasso achieved great critical acclaim in his lifetime; in 1939, MoMA staged a retrospective for “the most famous living artist”. The exhibition, Picasso: Forty Years of his Art, centred around Guernica (1937), a monumental painting depicting the bombing of the town during the Spanish Civil War. While such political concerns sometimes featured in his work, arguably it was the artist’s personal life that played the pivotal role in his creative process. His many turbulent relationships with women – wives, mistresses and muses – all left their mark on his art.
Pablo Picasso ‘Guernica’ 1937; Oil on canvas; 349.3×776.6 cm
2. Style and Influences
Picasso’s vast body of work is typically categorised into periods, starting with his Blue Period (1901-1904), during which he used predominantly cool tones in his paintings. The subject matter of these years matched the palette: sombre scenes of beggars and prostitutes, and portraits of a friend lost to suicide. The succeeding Rose Period (1904-1906) is characterised by warmer colours and a lighter mood; the young artist met many influential figures during this period, including Matisse and Gertrude Stein, who was to become his principal patron.
The ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) marks the start of Picasso’s African-influenced Period; the faces of the female figures in this painting are reminiscent of African masks. One can also see the origins of Cubism in the angular, fragmented composition. In 1909, this radical new genre was established in earnest, as Picasso collaborated with Georges Braque and entered his Analytic Cubism period. The two artists worked closely, studying the shapes of objects and depicting them from multiple perspectives.
Pablo Picasso ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ 1907
Picasso went on to develop Cubism beyond painting: from 1912 he started pasting cuttings of newspapers and wallpapers into compositions, thus advancing collage into a fine art form. As a Spanish citizen, he avoided the action of World War I, and continued to experiment with his technique of Synthetic or Crystal Cubism, named after the highly geometric rendering of objects in the works.
Following a trip to Italy in 1917, and the end of the war in 1918, Picasso joined in the “return of order” that characterised European art of the 1920s. He produced paintings inspired by the Old Masters, but also dabbled with the emerging Surrealist movement, in a decade-long period known as Neoclassicism and Surrealism (1919-1929).
From the 1930s, Picasso began addressing political concerns through his work, notably with Guernica (1937) and a series of sculptures commemorating Jewish friends killed in World War II. He continued to produce ceramic and bronze sculptures during his later years, as well as reworkings of canonical masterpieces during the 1950s and 60s. Towards the end of his life, his artistic output only increased, and in his final years he completed hundreds of paintings, etchings and engravings.
Pablo Picasso, ‘Femme assise et têtes barbues’, from ‘La Suite Vollard’. Estimate: £3,000 – 5,000
3. Printmaking
Picasso created over 2,400 prints throughout his career, experimenting with techniques including lithographs, etchings, drypoints, woodcuts and linocuts. In 1945, he began working at Atelier Mourlot, a renowned art publisher and workshop in Paris. For four years, he worked in close collaboration with the professional printmaker Henri Deschamps, creating around 200 lithographs.
While most of Picasso’s prints were produced after World War II, his first set of prints belong to his Rose Period (1904-1906). La Suite des Saltimbanques is characteristic of the young artist and his fascination with clowns, harlequins and carnival performers. The series comprises 15 etchings and drypoints, astutely depicting the private lives of these bohemian characters. A rare complete series was sold at Bonhams Prints and Multiples sale in 2019 for over £300,000.
Pablo Picasso ‘La Suite des Saltimbanques’
4. Ceramics
From the late 1940s onwards, Picasso produced hundreds of ceramic designs alongside his more famous paintings and works on paper. It all started with a visit to the 1946 pottery exhibition in Vallauris, near Cannes. Here, Picasso met ceramicists Suzanne and Georges Ramié, who gave him access to their workshop in exchange for selling the work he produced there. This mutually rewarding arrangement continued for the next 25 years.
Pablo Picasso, ‘Joueur de flûte’. Estimate: £ 4,000 – 6,000
Picasso found clay a relaxing medium, and there is a playfulness to his ceramics, from the simple bowls and plates of the early years, to the more ambitious designs incorporating mythological and animal shapes. The auction market for Picasso ceramics is attractive in its breadth, ranging from accessible large editions to unique pieces. The market has grown steadily over recent years, and exceptional works can sell for over £150,000 at auction.
5 Picasso at Auction
While several Picasso paintings rank among the most expensive in the world, collectors need not be intimidated. Thanks to his prolific output across many different media, works by the artist regularly come to market at a variety of price points. Any piece bearing Picasso’s name is an attractive investment, and the demand for his works has continued to grow solidly over the past decade. The market for ceramics and editions is particularly strong, as they represent an opportunity for established enthusiasts to add to their Picasso collections, and for emerging collectors to acquire an affordable original by the iconic artist.
Source: Bonhams
