Portraits Through the Ages

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Portraits Through the Ages

There have been various art movements since the beginning of art

impressionism, cubism, and surrealism to name just a few.

The first artist is the world famous Picasso. He was born in 1881 in

Malaga in the south of Spain and died in 1973. He moved to Paris in

April 1904 as this was the art capital of the world at this time. He

is probably one of the most innovative and creative artists of the 20th

century and is remembered especially for beginning the art movement of

cubism.

His self portrait of "1906" is the one I chose to start with. It is

oil on canvas and was painted early on in his career. It is a head to

waist composition. The background looks like a textured plain blue

which I fell emphasizes the actual drawing of Picasso. He is wearing

his work clothes and is carrying a paint palette to show that he is an

artist.

Picasso_Self06.jpg

I like the colour of this painting, it is quite realistic but he also

uses a lot of blue colours as he did in his painting around this time

as this was painted during the Spanish civil war and many of his

family or relatives were living in Spain at the time. I love the way

Picasso shows how he is felling through the colour of his paintings.

During the war there was a lot of depression and his friend committed

suicide this is shown through the blue colours in his work , this is

know as his blue period. However later when Picassobegan to fall in

love the blue colours changed into rose tones.

This painting has little tone but enough to make it look real and not

flat. The directional light is coming from the front but slightly to

the left. The light is not very strong and is probably only the light

getting in through a window facing him. I prefer these sort of

paintings with less detail, I feel paintings with lots of detail

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