Cubism and Political Modernism

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was the most influential artist of the 20th century — co-inventor of Cubism, ceaseless reinventor of form, and creator of the anti-war masterpiece Guernica. His output across painting, sculpture and ceramics is almost without parallel.

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1881–1973 · Spanish modern artist

Picasso shattered the single fixed viewpoint of Western art and made constant reinvention the hallmark of the modern artist.

Creator story

Surprising fact

Picasso could draw before he could speak, and produced an estimated 50,000 works in his lifetime — paintings, prints, sculptures and ceramics.

Source: Wikipedia / Wikimedia

Portrait of Pablo Picasso — Portrait: Wikimedia Commons / Wikipedia.

Co-founded Cubism with Georges Braque, fracturing objects into multiple simultaneous viewpoints.
Painted Guernica in response to the bombing of a Basque town — a monumental cry against war.
Constantly reinvented his style, from the Blue Period to collage to late expressive works.

Key works

A key work by Pablo Picasso

These works make it easiest to see how the artist changed form, content, and the very way art could exist in culture.

1937

Guernica

Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition after the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. The vast monochrome canvas turned the horror of the Spanish Civil War into one of the defining anti-war images of the twentieth century.