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The Art of Youth 1898-1901
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Self-Portrait
1899
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Picasso's decision to abandon his academic training was a decisive
crisis in his youth. The upheaval of having to leave everything
behind produced an immediate and visible result: he fell ill. In
spring 1898 in Madrid he came down with scarlet fever, and was
quarantined for forty days. We cannot say whether his psychological
state was responsible for the illness, but his bad health hardened
Picasso's resolve. He was scarcely recovered but he turned his back
on Madrid. After spending a brief while in Barcelona, he went to
Horta de Ebro with his friend Manuel Pallares. He stayed for almost
nine months in Pallares's home village in the deserted hills of
Catalonia, till February 1899. The two friends would go on long
walks together, and painted and drew.
Picasso then returned to Barcelona and embarked on his independent
career in art. The Catalan metropolis was his base till his
definitive final move to France in 1904. They were restless years,
and Picasso spent a number of longer periods in Paris as well as
making a further five-month attempt to settle in Madrid in 1901. And
of course they were unsettled years of crisis for Spain, too. In
1898, through its colony Cuba, Spain became involved in a war with
the USA. Defeat spelt the end of what remained of Spain's colonial
empire and claims to be a world power.
It was a turning point, and brought profound political, social and
cultural insecurity with it. People were torn between loyalty to a
great past and new affiliation with Europe. Their ideas ran the
entire gamut from liberal republicanism to anarchism. Castile and
Andalusia lost their dominance, while the industrial north came into
its own.
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In such a period, the seventeen-year-old Picasso had considerable
capital, albeit not of a financial kind. He was confident, talented
and young. He had contacts. And he had unlimited energy. His
father's encouragement had married a natural talent that took
demands easily in its stride, and the inevitable upshot was
independence of character. It was helpful that his father indirectly
cut the umbilical cord by renting a studio for his son during his
studies in Barcelona. More importantly, the father's strategies had
already gained Picasso a certain professional recognition.
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The Embrace
1900
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In 1896 "First Communion" was exhibited in Barcelona. This was the
third arts and crafts exhibition to be held there (after 1891 and
1894), a major event intended to showcase contemporary Catalan
culture. Some thirteen hundred works were on show, by important
artists of every aesthetic persuasion. The press response was also a
major one. To be exhibited in that show was a triumph for a
fifteen-year-old, even if his father's contacts had helped; to be
praised in a leading newspaper, even if he won no prizes, was even
better.
A year later he painted the grand "Science and Charity". Anecdotal
realism was a popular variety of historical painting at the time.
Picasso's picture had thematic links with various other paintings
that had been successfully exhibited, some of them in the Barcelona
show. Again his father's prompting and influence were decisive.
Picasso submitted the work to the Madrid General Art Exhibition, and
it was taken by a jury that included the painter Antonio Munoz
Degrain, a friend and colleague of his father's to whom the youth
had already given a portrait study." "Science and Charity" received
an honourable mention at the exhibition, and subsequently a gold
medal in Malaga.
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The Brutal Embrace
1900
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So Picasso was known to those who followed contemporary art when he
set out on his own way. And Barcelona was a good place for it, a
progressive city compared with traditionalist, academic Madrid.
Spanish art nouveau was based in Barcelona, in the form of a
group of artists known as the modernists, and in Barcelona too were
their successors and antagonists, the post-modernists. An architect
of global importance, Antoni Gaudi, was changing the face of the
city. The current aesthetic concerns of Europe were hotly debated,
and adapted to local needs. Barcelona was the centre for avant-garde
Spanish art, and at the nearby seaside resort of Sitges the Festa
Modernista was held, an art nouveau event to which special
trains were run.
In June 1897 the Barcelona cafe "Els Quatre Gats" (The Four Cats)
opened its doors. It was an artists' cafe and hosted changing
exhibitions in the spirit of "Le Chat Noir", the "Ambassadeur" or
"Le Mirliton" in Paris. True, "Els Quatre Gats" survived only till
1903; but in its short life it was the hub of Catalonian artistic
life. Leading "Modernistas" helped establish it: the painter Ramon
Casas (who won an award at the exhibition of 1896), painter and
writer Santiago Rusinol, and the journalist Miguel Utrillo. And
leading post-modernists were among its clientele, including Isidre
Nonell, Joaquim Mir and Ricardo Canals.
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The Embrace in the Street
1900
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It cannot have been too difficult for Picasso to join these
circles, since they would have heard his name; and belonging to them
was a good start for his career. In the art world as in any other,
talent and energy need personal contacts to help them on their way.
And it was contacts that helped decide Picasso for Paris. Though he
was impressed by what he had heard about Munich, it was to Paris
that he made his move. Munich art was seen in Barcelona, and indeed
at the 1896 exhibition painters and sculptors from Munich
constituted the largest foreign contingent. But Paris was closer in
various senses. It had an established Catalan community, including a
number of artists temporarily living and working in the city. So
Picasso did not have to conquer the great metropolis single-handed.
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Gypsy Outside "La Musciera"
1900
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He first visited Paris in autumn 1900, for the World Fair, where
his painting "Last Moments" had been chosen for the show of Spanish
art. Friends from "Els Quatre Gats" smoothed his way in Paris. He
was able to use their studios when they were visiting Spain, and he
was introduced to the industrialist and art dealer Pedro Manach, who
afforded him a first secure foothold. Manach signed a contract with
Picasso guaranteeing to take his pictures for two years and to pay
150 francs per month by way of fixed income. He also floated the
idea of a first Paris Picasso exhibition at the Galerie Vollard in
1901.
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The Montmartre Fair
1900
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To Picasso, this was no more than an entree into the art market.
For the moment, Spain seemed the better territory for his ambitions.
In early 1901 he went to Madrid and started an art magazine together
with a young writer, Francesc de Asis Soler. It was meant as a
platform for Spanish art nouveau and was tellingly titled "
Arte Joven" (Young Art). Benet Soler Vidal, whose family put up the
money for the project, was the editor, while Picasso was the art
director. It was not a particularly successful magazine and folded
after five issues; but it was eloquent of Picasso's views on art at
that period. Contributions were squarely in line with the
"Modernista" spirit, though they had a distinctly satirical and even
nihilist flavour to them. Picasso did the majority of the
illustrations. The magazine was modelled on the Barcelona modernist
organ "Pel y Ploma" (Brush and Pen), the presiding artist of which
was Ramon Casas. The aim was plainly to take contemporary art to
Madrid, the conservative heart of Spain. When failure became
inevitable, Picasso returned to Barcelona, and subsequently devoted
his attention to Paris.
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Montmartre Braserie: The Flower Vendor
1900
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At that time his work took its bearings from what the Spanish
avant-garde approved. He put his academic leanings aside and adopted
the new creative approaches of the period in the way he had learnt:
by copying. The works shown in his first exhibition at "Els Quatre
Gats", for instance, consisted mainly of portraits done after the
example of Casas' famous pictures of prominent people. The people
Picasso portrayed were not as well known, but he used the same
approach, drawing them from the knees up against a colourful
background, using a mixture of charcoal and watercolour.
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The Barcelona Bullring
1900
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Stylistically, these works are strongly contoured with heavy
outlines, and the facial features are highlighted with a few
economical strokes. Picasso works in polarities. The overall shape
is briskly established, but within it the face and body are
differently treated. The long vertical lines or broad-area charcoal
smudges are broken up with thick, obvious details. It is all done
with great panache, but it is clearly simpler and even more
schematic than pictures by Casas, where formal contrasts are far
more subtly deployed. Picasso is out for rapid, foreground impact,
and has reduced the structure of the models he is following to a
principle, leaving the background a large bare space.
To reduce the given to a principle, and to define form in terms of
linear contour and outline, were things that Picasso had learnt in
his training; so the line-based art of art nouveau presented
no problem to him. The menu he designed for "Els Quatre Gats"
in 1899 is a good example. Every shape is rendered in clear line.
Figures and background details work in plain zones of monochrome
colour, or else are offset from each other by minor, stylized
details. The illustration shows the speed and assurance with which
Picasso had adopted a "Modernista" approach. There would be no real
point in suggesting a specific influence on such a work."'' Far too
many of his works are much the same; Picasso was almost into serial
production, and the tendency stayed with him later and repeatedly
demonstrated the intensity with which he would pursue a subject or
form. Themes such as an embrace or a kiss were to be repeated many
times over, often varied only in some minor detail. He sketched
poses and groupings over and over, deploying the results in various
changing compositions.
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Menu of "Els Quatre Gats"
1899
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Interior of "Els Quatre Gats"
1900
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The Divan
1899
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But Picasso at that time did not confine himself to the repertoire
of art nouveau. He was omnivorous in his taste for new
aesthetic trends. Some of his drawings and paintings show him
reworking the formal idiom of El Greco. The Greek-born painter had
evolved his own distinctive style of elongated proportions and
powerful colours in the late 16th and early 17th century in Spain.
From El Greco Picasso borrowed the expressive elongation and the
restless brushwork. He had seen original El Grecos in the Prado, of
course; but his interest was also very much a product of the period.
For centuries El Greco had been forgotten, and it was not till the
19th century that avant-garde artists rediscovered him. Charles
Baudelaire was an admirer, Eugene Delacroix and Edgar Degas
collected his work - though as late as 1881 a director of the Prado
felt able to dismiss El Greco's paintings as "absurd caricatures".
It was not till the "Modernistas" that this Spanish attitude really
changed; Utrillo, above all, was instrumental in the revival of El
Greco's fortunes.
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The Blue Dancer
1900
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But it was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who made the most powerful
impression on the youthful Picasso. His posters and paintings,
draughtsmanlike in manner, economical, precise, often on the verge
of being caricatures, held a particular appeal for Picasso.
Toulouse-Lautrec was well known in Barcelona, but it was not till he
visited Paris that Picasso saw originals and even bought posters to
hang in his own studio. As well as formal considerations , what
interested him was the Frenchman's subject matter, the world of the
cabaret and night club, the world of dancers and conviviality. Soon
Picasso was producing his own pictures on these themes. In 1900,
Picasso's interest in Toulouse-Lautrec peaked in his painting
"Le Moulin de la Galette". Inside, there is a crowd; further
on, beyond a diagonally cropped group of women seated at a table to
the left, we see dancing couples as in a frieze. The subject and the
treatment are reminiscent of a Toulouse-Lautrec done in 1889, which
in turn was a reworking of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1876 painting of
the merriment at the famous Moulin, transposing the colourful fun
from the garden to the interior and to night. Picasso follows
Toulouse-Lautrec, and intensifies the effect by using the gas
lighting to establish an atmosphere of half-light, a uniform
duskiness in which the figures appear as patches of colour against a
dark background. Correspondingly, the style of brush-work is more
summary, working in large blocks and pinpointing only a few
characteristics of the people shown. The people have in fact been
stripped of their individuality and are merely props to illustrate
social amusement.
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Le Moulin de la Galette
1900
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So Picasso was not merely imitating. He also tried to reconceive
the originals he copied. Very soon he was trying to rework diverse
influences in a single work. A good example painted on cardboard in
1901 is "Pierreuse". A young woman wearing a red top
and a decorative hat is seated at a blue table, leaning on both
elbows, her right arm crooked to clasp her left shoulder. Her
attitude is one of protective barring and signals that she is
withdrawn within herself. Dreamily she gazes away into an undefined
and indistinct distance.
A sense of transported absence is conveyed not only by the woman's
pose but also by Picasso's compositional subtlety. The woman is
leaning across to the left side of the picture, establishing a
falling diagonal and thus introducing a quality of movement into the
work. But it is movement that is meticulously counterbalanced and
neutralized by the composition as a whole. The use of spatial areas
is richly ambivalent. Inclining across the table, the woman seems to
be coming nearer to us, and with her hat cropped more than once by
the picture edge it is as if she were on the point of stepping out
towards us. At the same time, though, her position on the other side
of the table emphasizes inaccessibility. It is a painting of mood,
and the contrastive use of colour, with the dichotomy of flat areas
and broken-up form, serve to underline its mood. While the face and
body are strongly outlined and colourfully painted in monochrome,
the background is an iridescent tapestry of colour dabs. It is a
restless patchwork of yellow, red, blue and green, and the pastose
painting disturbs our eye and establishes productive unclarities.
Picasso was using techniques borrowed from the pointillists, Vincent
van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and the Nabis all in one, to make a style of
his own.
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Pierreuse
1901
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The Dwarf
1901
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The same applies to his portrait of Pedro Manach. It is an
uncompromising frontal view. Manach's right hand is on his hip, his
left arm almost straight. The figure is a well-nigh pure study in
outline, set against an ochre yellow and almost entirely
undifferen-tiated background. Background and figure alike are done
as large areas lacking finish, and the face too has been established
with only a few lines and colours. It is a picture of contrasts, the
yellow background offsetting the white and dark brown of the
clothing; but the signal red of the tie, striking the sole
aggressive note, has the effect of resolving polarities and bringing
the whole work together. The influence of van Gogh's Provence work
done late in life, and of the Pont-Aven school, is palpable.
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Portrait of Pedro Manach
1901
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Portrait of Josep Cardona
1899
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The Closed Window
1899
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Of course contemporary critics were quick to notice Picasso's
adoption of current avant-garde artistic styles. Reviewing the work
shown in 1901 at the Galerie Vollard, Felicien Fagus wrote that
Picasso had plainly been influenced by "Delacroix, Manet, Monet, van
Gogh, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Forain, perhaps even Rops".
The only thing wrong with this assessment is that it misses out an
important name or two, such as that of Gauguin.
But the sheer number of influences on Picasso at that time need not
only be seen in a negative light. It is normal for young artists to
be influenced as they try to find their own style. And Picasso
wasn't merely copying; he was quickly able to harmonize various
influences into new wholes. If this had not been so, it would be
hard to understand his early success on the art market. He had an
excellent memory for formal qualities, one which stored them so
deeply that they became part of his own way of thinking. He was
imitating, yes - but he did so in order to find a style entirely his
own.
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1900 - 1901
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La Corrida
1900
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Corrida
1900
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Corrida
1900
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Bullfighting Scene
1901
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La Corrida
1901
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Head of a Woman
1901
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Portrait of a Woman
1901
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The Plumed Hat
1901
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French Cancan
1901
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Woman Leaning on a Table. Three Female Profiles
1901
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