Pablo Picasso significantly shaped the development of art in the twentieth century. This modern master is the subject of a small book, the first in a series featuring favorite artists and significant works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Each book presents a single artist and guides readers through a selection of his most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art and in the artist's own life. These books are excellent resources for anyone interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the modern canon.
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor, who remains one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He is mostly recognized for the Cubist movement, which he co-founded with Georges Braque. Eventually, his masterpiece Guernica is a pivotal example of this.
Firstly, Guernica displays the intense horror of the Spanish civil war and its impact on the city of Guernica. Then, Pablo's exceptional style helped the world understand the horrors of the war. Finally, it also brought Spain into the forefront of the European mind.
Through Cubism, Picasso showed the world how two-dimensional art could be seen in a number of ways. The dimensions and angles are an abstraction of all the essential features of a scene with only their base shapes. Picasso's style transpires his free spirit, eccentricity, and a complete disregard for any criticism of his work. In addition, this modern approach to painting far ahead of his time supported Picasso’s indelible impact on the art world to this very day.
