José Victoriano González-Pérez , better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement begun in Paris that revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and influenced artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.
Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was a German-born art collector, and one of the most notable French art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent as an art gallery owner in Paris beginning in 1907 and was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubist movement in art.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, a street in Barcelona, Spain. The figures are confrontational and not conventionally feminine, being rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes, some to a menacing degree. The far left figure exhibits facial features and dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two adjacent figures are in an Iberian style of Picasso's Spain, while the two on the right have African mask-like features. Picasso said the ethnic primitivism evoked in these masks moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force" leading him to add a shamanistic aspect to his project.
The Rose Period comprises the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1904 and 1906. It began when Picasso settled in Montmartre at the Bateau-Lavoir among Bohemian poets and writers. Following his Blue Period – which depicted themes of poverty, loneliness, and despair in somber, blue tones – Picasso's Rose Period represents more pleasant themes of clowns, harlequins and carnival performers, depicted in cheerful vivid hues of red, orange, pink and earth tones.
Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949), collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors and socialites during the first part of the 20th century. Claribel trained as a physician and Etta as a pianist. Their social circle included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. They gathered one of the best known private collections of modern art in the United States at their Baltimore apartments, and the collection now makes up a wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their collection was estimated to be worth almost a billion US dollars in 2002.
Dora Maar au Chat is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1941 and depicts Dora Maar, the artist's lover, seated on a chair with a small cat perched on her shoulders. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings, after achieving a price of $95 million at Sotheby's on 3 May 2006. It is currently the sixth-highest-selling painting by Picasso.
"If I Told Him : A Completed Portrait of Picasso” is a poem written by Gertrude Stein in 1923. It was first published in Vanity Fair in 1924 and she subsequently published it in her 1934 collection Portraits and Prayers. This poem was part of a multi-decade intertextual dialogue between Stein and Pablo Picasso. Stein was one of the first to exhibit Picasso’s paintings at her weekly salons at 27 rue de Fleurus. In 1906, Picasso completed a portrait of Stein, and the following year, she wrote her first literary portrait of Picasso, titled “Picasso.” Over a decade later, when the two were no longer working as closely together, she wrote this second portrait, notable for its non-representational style.
Jeune garçon au cheval is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. The painting is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was painted in Picasso's Rose Period from 1905 to 1906, when he was still a struggling artist living in Paris. The painting is a study for a much larger composition that Picasso never completed.
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso in the Analytical Cubism style. It was completed in the autumn of 1910 and depicts the prominent art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who played an important role in supporting Cubism. The painting is housed in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Proto-Cubism is an intermediary transition phase in the history of art chronologically extending from 1906 to 1910. Evidence suggests that the production of proto-Cubist paintings resulted from a wide-ranging series of experiments, circumstances, influences and conditions, rather than from one isolated static event, trajectory, artist or discourse. With its roots stemming from at least the late 19th century, this period is characterized by a move towards the radical geometrization of form and a reduction or limitation of the color palette. It is essentially the first experimental and exploratory phase of an art movement that would become altogether more extreme, known from the spring of 1911 as Cubism.
In 1935, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, 53, temporarily ceased painting, drawing, and sculpting in order to commit himself to writing poetry, having already been immersed in the literary sphere for years. Although he soon resumed work in his previous fields, Picasso continued in his literary endeavours and wrote hundreds of poems, concluding The Burial of the Count of Orgaz in 1959.
Head of a Young Woman is a 1906 oil painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts the portrait of a young woman with long, dark hair. The painting dates from Picasso's Rose Period, during a trip that he made to the Catalan village of Gósol. It was owned by Spanish banker Jaime Botín until it was seized by the Spanish state in 2015. It is now housed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Young Girl with a Flower Basket is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso from his Rose Period. The painting depicts a Parisian street girl, named "Linda", whose fate is unknown. It was painted at a key phase in Picasso's life, as he made the transition from an impoverished bohemian at the start of 1905 to a successful artist by the end of 1906. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings, after achieving a price of $115 million when it was sold at Christie's on 8 May 2018. It is currently the fourth highest-selling painting by Picasso.
Famille d'acrobates avec singe is a 1905 painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts a family of travelling circus performers during an intimate moment. The work was produced on cardboard using mixed media: gouache, watercolour, pastel and Indian ink. It is held by the Gothenburg Museum of Art in Gothenburg, Sweden. The work was painted at a key phase in Picasso's life, as he made the transition from an impoverished bohemian at the start of 1905 to a successful artist by the end of 1906.
Girl on a Ball or Young Acrobat on a Ball is a 1905 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he produced during his Rose Period. It depicts a group of travelling circus performers during a rehearsal, with a primary focus on two contrasting figures. It has been housed in the collection of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow since 1948.
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he painted in 1910. It is now housed in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The painting is a representation of the influential art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who played an important role in Picasso's early career as an artist. It is painted in the style of Analytical Cubism, which Picasso pioneered.
