Pablo Picasso

PABLO PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973).
"La Ronde de la Jeunesse, 1961.
Offset lithograph.
Signed and dated on plate.
Measurements: 65 x 50 cm.

The lithograph is based on a colored pencil drawing that Picasso made for the VIII World Youth Festival in Helsinki, 1961. This work represents a group of stylized figures, often interpreted as people of different races, dancing in a circle around a dove of peace, a recurring symbol in Picasso's work.

Creator of Cubism together with Braque, Picasso began his artistic studies in Barcelona, at the Provincial School of Fine Arts (1895). Only two years later, in 1897, Picasso had his first solo exhibition at the café "Els Quatre Gats". Paris was to become Pablo's great goal and in 1900 he moved to the French capital for a brief period of time. When he returned to Barcelona, he began to work on a series of works in which the influences of all the artists he had known or whose work he had seen could be seen. He is a sponge that absorbs everything but retains nothing; he is searching for a personal style. Between 1901 and 1907 he developed the Blue and Pink Stages, characterized by the use of these colors and by their subject matter with sordid, isolated figures, with gestures of sorrow and suffering. The painting of these early years of the twentieth century was undergoing continuous changes and Picasso could not remain on the sidelines. He became interested in Cézanne, and based on his example he developed a new pictorial formula together with his friend Braque: Cubism. But Picasso did not stop there and in 1912 he practiced collage in painting; from that moment on, anything goes, imagination became the master of art. Picasso is the great revolutionary and when all the painters are interested in cubism, he is concerned with the classicism of Ingres. The surrealist movement of 1925 did not catch him unawares and, although he did not participate openly, it served as an element of rupture with the previous, introducing in his work distorted figures with great force and not exempt of rage and fury. Picasso is represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London or the Reina Sofia in Madrid.