Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a true rarity, a visionary artist revered in his own lifetime. Picasso produced an astounding 22,000 pieces of art, many of which are still celebrated today as some of the world's finest.
Blue Period
Picasso's aptly titled Blue Period (1901-1904), including revered works like The Old Guitarist (1903) and The Blue Room (1901), features depictions of societal misfits, such as beggars and prostitutes. Picasso used blue tones in these paintings to project melancholy and despair.
Rose Period
The Rose Period (1904-1906) reflected Picasso's celebration of artists and performers. The famed painting known simply as The Acrobats (1905) revels in bright, cheery colors.
Cubism
Paintings from Picasso's cubist period (1907-1915) are instantly recognizable because of their jagged shapes, abstract images, and multiple points of view. The unconventional yet revolutionary painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), featuring five severely distorted women, helped usher in the period of cubism.
Guernica
As a brutal civil war raged throughout Spain in the 1930s, Picasso created what is widely considered his masterpiece, Guernica (1937). The painting portrays the death and destruction thrust upon the small bombed-out Spanish town of Guernica through a depiction of distorted, contorted humans and animals and images of fire.
Chicago Picasso
Although controversial at its unveiling, Picasso's towering 50-foot steel sculpture found in the midst of Chicago's Daley Plaza is now a symbol of city pride. Although open to interpretation, the abstract Chicago Picasso sculpture (1963) is generally believed to be modeled after a woman.
