Picasso and Sculpture

Pablo Picasso is one of the important names in the history of visual art, particularly in painting and in sculpture. Picasso was influential because of his role in the artistic movement and his contribution to the world and history of art. Picasso and the manifestation of his art, including his sculptures, were somewhat identified through the stages or times in his life.This paper will discuss the impact and role of this time periods and the influences in these time periods in the artist’s life and work in sculpture, including the reasons why he made the sculptures that he created during particular time periods, picking and analysing the thoughts that seemed to have been playing inside Picasso’s head at the time of the creation of a particular art work in sculpture.

This paper will also include description of the artwork in sculpture by Picasso, as well as the discussion of the role and impact of the women in Picasso’s life in the artist’s works.All in all, this paper will focus on discussing the different aspect involving Picasso and his career as a sculptor, including his sculptures and other important aspects that affected him and his involvement in this particular field of art. Werner Spies, an important person in the field of art today who was a director in a leading modern art center, believed Picasso’s sculpture managed to stand shoulder to shoulder with his paintings and drawings, further stressing that the sculptures of Picasso played an important role in Picasso’s life and career.This is because it acts as his career's 'highlight' and reflects Picasso’s “inventive force” as well as his “humor” (Pablo Picasso-The Sculptures, par 1). Picasso’s Sculptures Despite his European roots, Picasso was largely appreciated in the United States.

In 1967 he finished an untitled sculpture found in Chicago (see Figure 1). People refer to it as the Chicago Picasso but none seem to have a full comprehension or understanding of what it represents. It rises fifty feet from the ground.Looking at it, it is easily noticeable that Picasso opted for abstraction, not allowing the viewers to know for sure what the figure is. It can be a lot of different things, an animal perhaps, like a horse or even a bird. While some, consider it as an abstraction of the human figure.

It seems facing forward, with a curved face supported by body parts that consists of arching shapes in front and at the back. The two shapes connected by a rib-like design in the middle consisting of several straight rods connecting the two parts. Another Picasso sculpture was found in Halmstad.It was a tall white monument (see Figure 2) and like the first sculpture mentioned earlier, it looks like an abstraction of the human form since the sculpture has eye-like and face-like parts at the top; as if the face was cut out and shaped into a flat triangular/rectangular shape instead of the common rounded shape of the human head.

There are many other sculptures believed to be the work of Picasso, especially those found in his possession after he passed away, considering that sculpture was a more private part of his artistic manifestations.Picasso experimented with different mediums when it comes to his works in sculpture; he played with bronze as well as other metal and sheet metal. Picasso also tried his hands in wood as well as paper . Picasso’s Sculpture: Marginalized in its Early Days Today, institutions, like the Centre Georges Pompidou located in Paris, where Picasso frequented during his early and later life and career, believed that despite the fame that Picasso is enjoying, his sculpture was a set of his works that was marginalized and was not as popular compared to his paintings and drawings.But this is not to say that Picasso was not very good at sculpture. It’s just that the people before focused more on his paintings.

The Centre Georges Pompidou referred to the Picasso sculptures in display there as “unjustly disregarded . ” This is same reason why the institution acted upon this indignity and provided a special place in the museum for Picasso’s sculptures alone, which coincided with the efforts of the institution as well as other groups in the publication of books containing Picasso’s sculpture and some definitive analysis and insightful critique on the artist’s works.But while Picasso may have indeed tried sculpting through painting, his painting was still more powerful and more superior as an artwork compared to his sculptures that his sculptures, for some, cannot be easily considered as that which equals his very popular works. “But in sculpture nothing similar has been done.

Picasso himself did not achieve in sculpture the equivalent of his painted portrait of the good Clovis Sagot . ”The internet article, “Pablo Picasso, The Sculptor,” explained that the reason for the lack of publicity and fame accorded to Picasso’s sculptures when his paintings were very popular is that because Picasso kept his sculpting activities and artworks far from the public’s eye. It was only later that these sculptures were discovered and exhibited largely to the public, an effort that may take a long time before Picasso becomes ultimately synonymous as well in sculpture.It does not help that professionals believe that many sculptures of Picasso which he kept privately were either lost or destroyed over time, the public not given the chance to see them. During his lifetime, Picasso was so secretive of his sculptures that he only offered seven pieces during the Picasso retrospective exhibition which was held in 1932 at Galeries Petit, and that it would take more than thirty years more before he would allow important exhibitions in key art locations in Europe and the United States to show a more extensive collection of his sculptures to the public (Pablo Picasso-The Sculptures, par 2).Picasso’s Sculptures and Politics Besides pure aesthetic purposes, Picasso’s sculpture was also a symbolism of some of his personal passions and views in life.

This is reflected not just through the direct interpretation of his sculpture works, but through the act of sculpting per se. One particular proof is the fact that despite the presence of the occupying German forces inside Paris where he stayed These German forces would not highly approve of the topics of his artworks.Picasso still continued to produce artworks, including sculptures that including bronze casting which was forbidden by the Germans inside Paris and in other parts of the conquered Europe. The Impact and Role of the Different Time Periods of Picasso in his Sculpture Many art historians, analysts and critics are aware of the different important stages in the artistic career of Picasso. The stages are identified as the Blue Period, a four-year stretch that happened from 1901 to 1904, followed by a three year period called the Rose Period happening from 1905 up to 1907.

The African-influenced period was a two-year long period starting in 1908 and lasting until the following year in 1909. Picasso’s stage of Analytic Cubism was four years long, starting in 1909 and ending in 1912, followed by Synthetic Cubism which started in 1912 and ending in 1919. During the cubist time period, it seems that Picasso also made sculptures that adhere to this particular discipline, although these sculptures did not become as popular as his cubist paintings.Picasso was believed to have kept sculpture works that are characterized by its “cubistic assemblages,” found along with the iron sculptures which many professionals believe made by Picasso's hands sometime in 1929 .

But these eras, in general, are popular not because of Picasso’s sculptures, but because of the paintings and drawings that he made during these different time periods.The significance of sculpture for Picasso and his exhibition of his sculptures leading to the appreciation of the people of this particular style of his happened later in his life. But Picasso was, nonetheless, accepted as a notable sculptor that he was included in the exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - the 3rd Sculpture International which was held in 1949. Reasons Why He Made the Sculptures Picasso’s sculpture and efforts at making sculpture included a sketch for a project that he wanted to pursue, entitled La Morte.

There was also a 1973 piece entitled 1973. One of the most popular is the “La petite chouette” sculpture - a part of the Picasso assemblages’ sculpture that professionals believe Picasso started working on around the years of 1940. La petite chouette, for Picasso, originally was his effort at creating a symbolic image that may refer to the idea of an owl, which later on and close to the finishing of the piece already bore a strong likeness to the original image that Picasso was trying to bring to life.Picasso’s assemblage-sculpture involved everyday things like the handlebars and a saddle of an old bicycle. The sculpture La petite chouette was no exception since this was made from scrap metal he saw and picked around the studio where he worked like nails and screws and bigger scrap metals, including a saucepan.

Unlike his motivation and reason for painting, Picasso’s assemblage sculpture was an effort to express the very immediate feeling or thought that has captured his mind, making his sculptures the tangible proofs of his inspirations by the moment.Unlike his painting that focused largely on women which were his inspirations, his sculptures are focused on animals and objects like owls and bulls and represent a more spur-of-the-moment artistic manifestation for Picasso . But despite what others interpreted as a straight forward message sending action that Picasso’s sculptures do as it interacts with its audience, there are also those who believe that like his approach in his paintings.Picasso also made some sculptures that possess metaphoric qualities, message and intent wise pertaining to the sculptor’s reason and intention for creating such work.

“Picasso used metaphor only in his constructed sculptures, for many of the sculptures he modelled in clay and plaster, have, like his contemporary paintings, a significant metaphoric dimension . ” Picasso’s sculpture was indeed about form, transcending the limitations other perceive that he focuses too much on the face and its details.Even when focused on this particular part of the body, Picasso’s detail and sensitivity in forms and shapes echo strongly even in his sculptures that many people regard him highly as a sculptor. “It gives me great pleasure to speak of Picasso as a sculptor. I have always considered him a man of form because by nature he has the spirit of form . ” Spaniel pointed out that Picasso was trying to use sculpture to communicate in a different way a somewhat different message compared to the messages he was conveying in his paintings.

Spaniel was particularly struck by the idea that the main characteristic of Picasso’s sculpture was the focus on the head and the details of this particular anatomical part - may it be that of a human or of an animal (in the case of the bull he tried to create using bicycle handlebars and the owl image in La petite chouette, as well as the Chicago Picasso and the white Picasso sculpture in Halmstad), more so, to disfigure the head or a part of it, or present it in an abstracted form.An example of this is Picasso’s Man with Massive Nose (see Figure 3). This bronze sculpture has a characteristic that is very easily noticeable, an oversized nose. Perhaps Picasso’s love and passion for sculpture was manifested greatly through his paintings.

But critics were not able to see it that way before they discovered that Picasso heavily sculpted as well but not shown or displayed it publicly until more recently.There is a characteristic in Picasso’s subjects that makes them look three dimensional on canvass, as if he was trying to sculpt an image through his brush, like his painting Jacqueline and the very popular Demoiselles d’ Avignon which critics believed to be heavily inspired by Picasso's inspiration and awe for sculpture and sculpted works. “It was Pablo Picasso who created an aggressive, extroverted primitivism during the explosively creative period in which the Demoiselles d' Avignon was painted.Picasso’s Demoiselles (1907) embraced an even more radical primitivism because it assimilated sculpture, the most reviled of primitive arts . ” Indeed, there are many art historians and analysts who are pointing to the inclination of Picasso towards sculpture.

There were many signs, including his attitude and take on the idea of form and how it is used and managed in composition, painting or sculpture. Gonzales is saying here that Picasso was interested in turning Cubist paintings into sculptures and that it was the construction of the object that was important (Acton, p 237). ” Here, one of the motivations, as well as one of Picasso’s reasons for trying his hand on sculpture is exposed, and understood. He was, after all, a man known to be always in constant pursuit of trying to get to a new state of thinking when it comes to art that is why an important artistic movement is attributed to him.