Picasso: Dominating 20th Century Art
by Peter Kang

To portray Picasso as a great artist of this century is just one of the reasons to recognize the enormous influence he has had on the world and to art. It took many great artists, such as Van Gogh, many years after their death to become an appreciated master of art. However, Picasso was able to achieve fame and celebrity status during his lifetime and became the center of controversy and attention in the artistic world of the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso, born in Malaga, Spain in 1881, was gifted in art at a young age. He moved to Paris, the center of painting, at the beginning of this century, and became involved in a number of styles such as pointillism, impressionalism, and symbolism. Picasso's famed artistic career was divided into periods, where certain themes were implied with each period.

From 1901-1904, Picasso created paintings with sadness and melancholy using shades of blue. This period was called the Blue Period and included famous paintings such as The Old Gutarist, painted in 1903. He then went on into the Rose Period (1904-1906), using the theme of circus and shades of rose to depict life of circus performers.

In 1907, Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a painting that brought the world into modernism with the use of cubism, a technique Picasso and his painter friend Braque established. Using geometric figures and distortion, Picasso's paintings took on a distinctive style.