Blue Period
At the time, having renounced his classical and traditional education and searching for fame, Picasso and his friend, Carles Casagemas moved to Paris. Unfortunately, just a year later, Casagemas became hopelessly miserable from a failed love affair and committed suicide. Picasso was greatly afflicted by this horrible event and was soon depressed and desolate. In addition, Picasso was very poor. His absolute poverty made him identify and relate to beggars, prostitutes, and other downtrodden outcasts in society. In fact, The Old Guitarist is modeled after a blind artist in Madrid.
These events and circumstances led to the creation of Picasso’s Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 to 1904. The Blue Period is identified by the flat expanses of blues, greys, and blacks, melancholy figures lost in contemplation, and a deep and significant tragedy. However, some rumors say that Picasso was so poor he could only afford a canvas and tubes of blue paint. Either way, The Old Guitarist is a painting produced during Picasso’s Blue Period.
Read more about this topic: The Old Guitarist
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or period:
““... Can poet’s thought
That springs from body and in body falls
Like this pure jet, now lost amid blue sky,
Now bathing lily leaf and fish’s scale,
Be mimicry?””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Stupid word, that. Period. In America it means “full stop” like in punctuation. That’s stupid as well. A period isn’t a full stop. It’s a new beginning. I don’t mean all that creativity, life-giving force, earth-mother stuff, I mean it’s a new beginning to the month, relief that you’re not pregnant, when you don’t have to have a child.”
—Michelene Wandor (b. 1940)